Maria Bamford makes this affectionate documentary funny and moving through her candour about mental illness. Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley give her a generous hearing, though their crowded, conventional approach needs more restraint.
Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story is a funny, affecting documentary that spends rather too long establishing how much its subject deserves our attention. Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley approach Maria Bamford with affection and an interest in how her experiences become comedy. That gives the film something worth pursuing beyond a comedian’s professional achievements. We recommend it for her candour, with a warning that its 116 minutes feel crowded.
Her confessional comedy is disorienting, and the film helps explain why those unsettling changes of direction belong in her work. The accounts of mental illness give the jokes a personal context without requiring the audience to treat laughter as an inappropriate response. The directors make room for humour alongside hardship, which is essential to the portrait. A film that asked us to stop finding her funny whenever she spoke about something painful would miss much of what makes her worth listening to.
The family interviews are especially useful because they bring us closer to people who already figure in her work. Hearing from them gives the comedy a setting beyond the stage, and the film benefits from having someone else help tell the story. The portrait of her relationship with her husband is warm without making domestic contentment seem like a solution to everything. These sections give us reasons to care about her life beyond the question of how much recognition her work receives.
We were moved by the encounters at the mental health convention. The people who speak with her there give the film a wider interest than its account of a single performer might suggest. Her openness about mental illness has already given the documentary weight, and these conversations make the directors’ concern for other people convincing. This is where the affectionate approach feels most useful, because the attention is shared with people who are not the subject of a feature-length tribute.
Neil Berkeley’s cinematography fits the film’s straightforward approach, keeping the attention on the people speaking. There is no need for elaborate visual invention in every interview, though the familiar presentation contributes to the feeling that the film could take more chances. James Leche’s editing has to accommodate comedy, family testimony and accounts of mental illness, and the resulting portrait is overfull. Too many worthwhile pieces have been kept, and the film becomes tiring through accumulation. A little less material would have allowed the most revealing conversations to stay with us longer.
Among documentaries about comedians, this is a good, recognisable example of the affectionate approach. Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley take the work seriously and make its relationship to the life comprehensible, but viewers who know the story already may find little to surprise them. Their admiration also makes the film feel safer than the comedy it contains, and a more selective account might have served her better. Come for Maria Bamford, with patience for the extra time spent establishing that she deserves the attention.
