“Turn Every Page”

Four-sentence movie review, a la Orange Crate Art’s “Twelve Movies” review series [Michael, did you do this movie? I don’t   see a review Update: his review is in the comments]
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, dir. Lizzie Gottlieb, USA, 2022

The pursuit of excellence is fascinating to watch, often whether you’re interested in the specific undertaking or not. I care nothing about fly fishing, but I loved the descriptions of its gear, tackle, and techniques in the novella A River Runs Through It; and people who don’t care about writing might still be interested in—or at least amused by—the wars fought over semi-colons in Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb —a documentary about the fifty-year working relationship between the two Roberts—Caro, author of the excellent 4-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson (with a fifth volume to come, if Caro lives so long), and Caro’s editor, Gottlieb, who made the work more excellent. 

Maybe the pursuit is fascinating because the techniques of any excellence are applicable to many others, at least metaphorically: the persistence required to stand in a cold river waiting for a conjunction of conditions favorable to catching a fish, for instance, looks something like Caro’s exquisite handling of LBJ’s brother—a fabricator of tales whom Caro had written off, until Caro recognized a change in him after he (the brother) became deathly ill—at which time Caro sat him down at the Johnson family table and asked him what really went on there; and out it came, their father dishing out humiliation to the young Lyndon. 

Turn Every Page winks at the viewer who might think punctuation is a frivolous thing to storm out of a room over, as both of the Bobs do over the years; but punctuation is a tool like other tools that tie things together (fishing flies) or break them apart (atoms)—if you want excellence, Caro conveys, precision matters—and furthermore, in a less elevated application, punctuation is awfully handy for anyone stringing together phrases for a movie review with a four-sentence limit.

5 out of 5 ⭐️ stars
On the Criterion channel and elsewhere


Fishing fly ^ via darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2014/07/fly-fishing-the-art-of-tying-artificial-flies/#1