Culture Chronicler
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Culture Chronicler A new Netflix documentary looks at Joan Didion’s literary legacy.
On a patio deck overlooking the ocean, Quintana Roo Dunne (left) leans on a railing with her parents, American authors and scriptwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in Malibu, Calif., 1976.
At age 82, Joan Didion is the grande dame of the personal essay, but as her nephew Griffin Dunne’s new Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (Oct. 27) makes clear, she is also a badass. This is a woman who looked past the flowers and peace signs of the Summer of Love to report on its drug-fueled underbelly; who flew to El Salvador to write about the United States’ involvement in its civil war; and who unpacked the class and racial issues driving the media circus around the Central Park Five. For those familiar with The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion’s self-reflective volume from 2005, the film is a reminder that she has been
organizing the country’s cultural chaos into neatly turned sentences for half a century. “I was very conscious of the fact that there has never been a documentary about Joan, which I thought was both surprising and a little criminal,” says Dunne. “[It’s] about how her work intersects with her life, how interchangeable they are, how she writes to know what she thinks.” Even though Didion is his aunt, Dunne says he never considered editing out private or revealing moments, and the result is a film as unflinching as Didion’s prose. “It’s all part of the story,” says Dunne, “and I knew Joan as a journalist would understand that.”
56 GOTHAM
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M O D E R N L U X U R Y. C O M
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN BRYSON/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES (TOP); BY MARTINA TOLOT (DUNNE)
BY OUSSAMA ZAHR
Culture Chronicler A new Netflix documentary looks at Joan Didion’s literary legacy.
On a patio deck overlooking the ocean, Quintana Roo Dunne (left) leans on a railing with her parents, American authors and scriptwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, in Malibu, Calif., 1976.
At age 82, Joan Didion is the grande dame of the personal essay, but as her nephew Griffin Dunne’s new Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (Oct. 27) makes clear, she is also a badass. This is a woman who looked past the flowers and peace signs of the Summer of Love to report on its drug-fueled underbelly; who flew to El Salvador to write about the United States’ involvement in its civil war; and who unpacked the class and racial issues driving the media circus around the Central Park Five. For those familiar with The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion’s self-reflective volume from 2005, the film is a reminder that she has been
organizing the country’s cultural chaos into neatly turned sentences for half a century. “I was very conscious of the fact that there has never been a documentary about Joan, which I thought was both surprising and a little criminal,” says Dunne. “[It’s] about how her work intersects with her life, how interchangeable they are, how she writes to know what she thinks.” Even though Didion is his aunt, Dunne says he never considered editing out private or revealing moments, and the result is a film as unflinching as Didion’s prose. “It’s all part of the story,” says Dunne, “and I knew Joan as a journalist would understand that.”
56 GOTHAM
|
M O D E R N L U X U R Y. C O M
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN BRYSON/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES (TOP); BY MARTINA TOLOT (DUNNE)
BY OUSSAMA ZAHR
