Back in the day, Rose Styron, the writer and wife of William Styron, recounted the story of an American delegation of authors visiting Rio, among them her friend the playwright Arthur Miller. Local headlines focused on Miller, the husband of Marilyn Monroe. In this rich documentary of her father, Rebecca Miller addresses the matter of her father’s second and most famous wife, but told John Guare in a post-screening conversation at MoMA, this was really not discussed in their family life, except for the random anecdote. The daughter of Miller and his third wife, photographer Inge Morath, Rebecca Miller interviewed her father for the last 25 years of his life—he died in 2002– with Ellen Kuras filming, and then was in post-production for another eight, to make Arthur Miller: Writer, to air on HBO next week.

Yes, it is a father-daughter piece that does not shy away from important questions: what does it mean to be a father? That the film reveals another child, Rebecca’s younger brother, institutionalized for Down Syndrome, gives meaning to Miller’s writerly response involving the myth of Zeus who wields thunderbolts that may kill you or hold you up. Rebecca Miller now has sons of her own (with her husband Daniel Day-Lewis.) As an interviewer, she is adoring daughter and artist respectfully curious about her father’s genius.

Making vital connections to her father’s plays, Miller provides details about his parents: their lives on the upper West Side before the stock market crash of 1929 kaboshed his father Izzie’s business, and his spirit, inform Death of a Salesman. Faced with the House Unamerican Activities Committee tribunal, Miller did not name names, but penned The Crucible. Miller’s three marriages are given equal time with the Marilyn Monroe sequence revealing the difficulties of life with a person so damaged and insecure. Miller’s humor –not evident in his public persona, comes through.

Among those attending the special screening were actors Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, John Ventimiglia, poet Anne Waldman, playwright Kenneth Lonergan, and Sheila Nevins, who shepherded this project through HBO before her own retirement. She remains a presence.

Eminently quotable, Arthur Miller insisted that tragedy was more optimistic than comedy. He also said, “Art is long. Life is short.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura