Matthew Perry: the missing chapter
Netflix has released a three-part documentary that aims to be a posthumous portrait of the actor Matthew Perry, known essentially for his role as Chandler Bing in the series Friends. Perry passed away three years ago, after a long history of addiction to alcohol and opioids.
The documentary's synopsis falls into the enunciative trope of "discovering the real Matthew Perry," a common device in these types of productions that reveal the tormented life of someone who has died prematurely. It is almost a genre: from the multiple investigations into the death of Marilyn Monroe to the Robin Williams documentary Come inside my mind, to productions about Amy Winehouse. These are documentaries that can fall into hagiography, or try to do justice to the protagonist, that may spread awareness about mental health, or that, quite simply, can take advantage of the miseries of celebrity to expose them even more and profit from them.
In the case of The one of Matthew Perry the result is quite decent. For the title, the formula used by Friends to name the episodes is used: The one of... On the other hand, the non-participation of the other five cast members of the series is an absence that weighs too heavily. The creators of Friends also do not take part. Mary Robertson, the director of the documentary, explained in an interview with Los Angeles Times that they had all declined the invitation to participate. It even seems like a decision made collectively. Perhaps mistrust of the final result or the discomfort of explaining the darker side of their friend were weighty reasons. Often, even if the documentary has the best of intentions, there is a delicate factor that is the limits of what you can explain and what is best left unsaid out of respect. On the other hand, in the case of Matthew Perry, who had written his memoirs and publicly explained his problems, it allows us to think that the documentary perpetuates the protagonist's desire to raise awareness about the drama of addiction.
The essential voice of the documentary is that of his sister Mia. In fact, she is the person to whom the actor would have delegated all legal matters. Also, his two best friends from adolescence speak of Perry with a very sincere affection. Everyone praises the protagonist for contrasting his human quality with his inability to overcome his mental problems. Three episodes are excessive, and a good part of the series is spent interpreting Perry's state of health from the archive footage based on his physical appearance. The details about the circumstances of his death that are revealed in the last episode are a minor aspect. It is a sad documentary, of which you already know the ending from the very beginning. It is neither optimistic for those who have gone through the same thing nor cheerful for his fans. It satisfies the simple morbid curiosity of seeing how a man's life deteriorates.
