Documentary film “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces”, which was released on Apple TV+ a few weeks ago, shows us how Steve Martin has contained multitudes. At first, the documentary, which consists of two episodes as reflected by its very title, seems to enumerate merely the high points of his early career period when he struggled to reach for his own comic style, but then it goes for something a bit deeper during the second half where Martin reveals a little more of himself, and it is engaging to observe how its two different parts come to resonate with each other.

The first half of the documentary, “Then”, focuses on how Martin honed his comic talent and style during his early career years. Even when he was young, he was quite interested in show business, and he actually wanted to be a magician at one point. However, he subsequently considered becoming a stand-up comedian instead, and he promised to himself that he would consider other options if he were going nowhere even when he became 30.

As a guy who enjoyed a lot watching a number of different comedians ranging from Bob Hope to Jack Benny, Martin came to find how to try new and different things as an emerging stand-up comedian, though his experiments were not always successful. Unlike most of traditional stand-up comedians, he did not go for punchlines at all as deliberately generating the tension and confusion between him and his audiences, and that certainly baffled his audiences more than once.

While even he was not so sure about whether his comic tactics could work, Martin gradually drew more attention, and he happened to be at the right time for his challenging comic style. As the American society was shaken up a lot by lots of social/political upheavals during the 1960s, many people were ready for new and different things, and Martin’s unorthodox comic style eventually became quite popular enough to boost his career more.

However, Martin was already considering moving onto different stuffs for reinventing his comic persona. Around the time when he frequently appeared along with many notable contemporary American comedians such as Chevy Chase and John Belushi in “Saturday Night Live”, he came to see that his comic style was not exactly a novelty now, so he stopped appearing on the stage after 1980 while readying to expand the range of his comic persona. He appeared in “The Jerk” (1979), and the considerable commercial success of this rather silly comedy film gave him a movie stardom which allowed him to make more comedy films during next several years.

Probably because many of us are quite familiar with what Martin did during his movie acting career, the second half of the documentary, “Now”, goes forward to Martin reflecting on how things have been mostly good to him during last several decades – how he is also ready to go on during the rest of his life. Thanks to the success of his comedy TV series “Only Murders in the Building”, he and his longtime friend/colleague Martin Short came to have an unexpected high point in their later careers, and the documentary often shows them preparing for their upcoming joint stand-up comedy performance.

In addition, we also see Martin working on a graphic novel which presents a series of personal episodes associated with a number of his notable comedy films such as “All of Me” (1984) and “Roxanne” (1987). Checking out the outputs from his collaborators, he became a bit nostalgic at times, but he remains mostly dry and phlegmatic, and that makes a big contrast with when he later reminisces about when he worked with late John Candy in “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” (1987). As remembering how Candy soulfully delivered a monologue which was sadly cut short in the final version of the film, Martin could not help but become a little sentimental, and that brief poignant moment makes us more curious about whatever Martin has kept to himself behind his familiar public persona.

However, interestingly, Martin does not show or reveal everything to us even though he is often quite frank and straightforward in front of the camera. Many of his friends and colleagues interviewed for the documentary recognize how he has often been shy and introverted, and he honestly admits that he often had anxiety attacks during his early career years, though he is not so willing to delve into his darker personal times. As a matter of fact, he had a very unhappy childhood time mainly due to his distant father, and it took some time for him to process his complex feelings toward his father, with whom he eventually made a peace around the time of his father’s death.

After understanding his father better, Martin has tried to be a good father and husband to his family, though, again, he reminds us again of what a deeply private person he really is. While his second wife gladly tells a bit about her life with Martin, the documentary thoughtfully respects his wish to keep their little daughter out of the screen – even when she comes forward to her father at one point around the end of the documentary.

On the whole, “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces” is an interesting portrayal of one of the best American comedians of our time, and director Morgan Neville, who previously made “20 Feet from Stardom” (2013) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018) did a skillful job of juggling various elements including the interviews from a number of several notable comedians such as Tina Fey and Jerry Seinfeld, who incidentally has some jolly fun as throwing several questions to Martin in front of the camera. Even at the end of the documentary, Martin remains rather elusive as maintaining his public persona as before, but that is what he exactly wants for now, and the documentary respects that while vividly and successfully showing us how compelling he is an entertainer.