A documentary of uncommon frankness and honesty, Introducing, Selma Blair takes us inside the eponymous actor’s health battles, following a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in August 2018, and through the first stages of a radical experiment to cure the ailment that afflicts her. One will immediately recognize Selma Blair from a myriad of appearances – the lion’s share of them in supporting roles – in movies at the turn of the century. From 2001’s Legally Blonde (in which her character, the initially antagonistic Vivian, eventually befriends Reese Witherspoon’s Elle) to 2004’s Hellboy and its 2008 sequel (in which she played the pyrokinetic Liz), Blair’s talent has never been an open question. There has always been an intensity of commitment in her performances, and it comes as no surprise that she shares those qualities in her private life.
Rachel Fleit’s film features very little archival footage or interviews covering Blair’s career. This is the right decision. The story being told here, after all, is that of her illness, the fight to stave off certain death while she can, and the openness she has granted the film’s producers and director to share her space during such a time. The movie and Blair are entirely truthful about the effects of the disease upon the spinal cord and brain, as we see in full during an early interview, where the personal nature of the questions and the absence of Blair’s emotional support dog trigger some of the symptoms of the disease (slowed and slurred speech and the sense that the upper spine is briefly unable to support any weight).
It’s heartbreaking to witness that shift, from the infectious, self-deprecating personality to a woman who feels more than a bit broken by the disease, but essential to understanding why Blair might want to roll the dice with an experimental procedure to cure her MS. Living with the symptoms is obviously out of the question, and though the procedure (which involves stem cell transplantation) is along the lines of chemotherapy to eradicate cancer from the body, it’s a lot more dangerous in the specifics of the process. Blair finds the challenge a worthy one, given the end game, and that certainly speaks volumes about her courage. The existence of this film suggests an extra layer of courage, too.
In terms of the film’s structure, Fleit simply follows Blair around her home – mostly in the year 2019, when the procedure was in full swing – and chronicles her initial symptoms, what led to the first doctor visit, and the effect the disease has had, not only in her profession, but also in her family life: Arthur, her son by her second adult relationship, splits time between his mother and father, a process that only increases in complexity with Blair’s illness and once the world is in the grip of an ongoing health crisis.
The movie is an effective empathy machine, placing us in any given moment directly in Blair’s headspace (and that isn’t even counting the handful of personal video diaries in which she simply talks to the camera) during a fit of illness or in the aftereffects of the procedure. Elsewhere, glimpses of her professional accomplishments eventually pave the way for a deeper understanding of her relationships, such as the way her mother Molly seems to have kept affection at arm’s length for much of their time together, and what she has come to understand about the world around her. That, after all, is what our lives come down to, and Introducing, Selma Blair is an affecting document about coming to that realization.
Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing/Discovery+
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