Gilbert

Gilbert Got­tfried has the unusu­al hon­our of remain­ing a pop cul­ture fix­ture more recog­nis­able by sound than sight. An Amer­i­can stand-up sta­ple since the 1970s, this ​“comedian’s come­di­an” has made a for­tune off of his sin­gu­lar, Brook­lyn-bred croak, which has giv­en voice to every­thing from a con­niv­ing car­toon par­rot to a scream­ing, insur­ance-shilling duck over the course of a near­ly 50-year career.

In the flesh, Got­tfried has craft­ed a short-fused, larg­er-than-life stage per­sona — defined by hunched frame, twitchy ges­tic­u­la­tions, and that screech­ing, bel­low­ing rasp — that thrives as a comedic device but also an ele­ment of dis­guise, designed to place focus on the wild, spotlit per­former while avert­ing our gaze from the famous­ly pri­vate man who resides off-stage.

All of that changed, how­ev­er, when Got­tfried became, to the sur­prise of many, a hus­band and father in the late 2000s. Film­mak­er Neil Berke­ley has fash­ioned his new doc­u­men­tary Gilbert as a dual char­ac­ter study, chron­i­cling the aging come­di­an and semi-new­found fam­i­ly man at this unex­pect­ed junc­ture in life. It is also, inevitably, an unmask­ing of Got­tfried, who, like many comics of any gen­er­a­tion, con­tin­ues to iden­ti­fy as an extro­vert in the lime­light and an intro­vert in the real world.

Berke­ley begins his film exact­ly as you expect him to, using a flur­ry of archival footage cher­ry-picked from across Gottfried’s career to con­vey that he has indeed been side-split­ting since the begin­ning. As its basic struc­ture (filled with talk­ing-head inter­views from Gottfried’s peers and sweet, casu­al footage of his life at home and on the road) takes hold, Gilbert quick­ly starts to resem­ble all those oth­er fawn­ing, hagio­graph­ic artist por­traits that refuse to push their sub­jects toward tougher dis­cov­er­ies. There’s even the req­ui­site moment in which com­e­dy is described as an addic­tion, this time cour­tesy of Jim Gaffi­gan, who trite­ly declares, ​“Once you’re a come­di­an, you have that hero­in in your system.”

But nei­ther Berke­ley nor Got­tfried prove con­tent with mere­ly dawdling on the sur­face. What emerges is a film keen to plumb Gottfried’s eccen­tric­i­ties, like his self-admit­ted cheap­ness and hoard­er habits, mem­o­rably visu­alised by the mul­ti­ple box­es of hotel soaps and sham­poos he stores in his home, one of the most indeli­ble details of a trav­el­ing stand-up’s work­man­like exis­tence. But direc­tor and sub­ject are also unit­ed in explor­ing the dark­er shades of the latter’s life, accru­ing emo­tion­al depth by lin­ger­ing on peri­ods like Gottfried’s teenage years, in which he was a high school dropout who nev­er over­came his tor­tured, frac­tious rela­tion­ship with a dom­i­neer­ing father who demand­ed his son pick up a prac­ti­cal trade.

Gilbert, then, is many things. It’s a riotous con­cert doc­u­men­tary and a com­pas­sion­ate inquiry into the role of com­e­dy, which, for Got­tfried, is at once a release valve and a suit of armour. It’s also a self-reflex­ive cri­tique of the role of a come­di­an that admires but doesn’t lionise Gottfried’s rep­u­ta­tion as an unfil­tered loose canon: a joke about Macken­zie Phillips and father-daugh­ter incest is clear­ly drawn as a line in the sand, as are the 2011 Japan­ese tsuna­mi tweets that almost sank Gottfried’s career.

But Gilbert is, just as cru­cial­ly, a love sto­ry between Got­tfried and his fam­i­ly, includ­ing his wife Dara, a charm­ing woman who can more than keep up with her husband’s break­neck quips and comes forth as both his crit­ic and defend­er. This lat­ter focus also extends, quite poignant­ly, to Gottfried’s tight-knit rela­tion­ships with his sis­ters Karen and Arlene, whom he vis­its every day when at home in New York.

Gilbert is nev­er more mov­ing than when it veers away from its sub­ject to con­cen­trate instead on the old­er, mul­ti­fac­eted Arlene, who passed away in August 2017. Arlene saw street pho­tog­ra­phy and, lat­er, gospel-singing as per­son­al, spir­it-lift­ing forms of expres­sion that were as equal­ly vital as her brother’s com­e­dy. Berkeley’s film qui­et­ly puls­es with the knowl­edge that we all have our cop­ing mech­a­nisms, whether it be the sooth­ing click of a cam­era-eye or the roar­ing, cathar­tic laugh­ter of a full and rec­i­p­roca­tive house.