Roadrunner

 

Morgan Neville's Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain -- despite its questionable but generally undetectable AI enhancements -- offers a thoughtful reassessment of the public and private life of the eponymous media icon, celebrity chef, gourmand and world traveler. The audience will undoubtedly know that the charismatic Bourdain committed suicide in 2018, after a period of international celebrity as the author of Kitchen Confidential and host of CNN's culinary travelogue Parts Unknown. That knowledge does not dull the edge of the film's point that his death was painful to many, made more so because Bourdain lived with gusto and daring.

Neville pairs archival footage of Bourdain with accounts from friends and family, all of which depict a man with an unquenchable thirst for exploration and, perhaps, distraction. A recovered drug addict, Bourdain discovered new obsessions in his work, exploring and writing about the folkways of people around the globe, particularly in unfamiliar corners and quarters. 

Failed romances, late fatherhood and a grueling travel schedule took a toll, unnoticed at that time, on Bourdain's mental and emotional health. His fall, in the last year of his life, was precipitous and puzzling, involving the idolization of a new muse, actress and women's rights activist Asia Argento, and the rejection of old friends, who, the film suggests, feel not only loss but betrayed by a man they loved dearly but who didn't love himself enough.