How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer gives a sleekly edited, sophisticated documentary treatment to the titular famed novelist-writer’s life. The film delves into the most vital facets of Mailer’s life – from his provocative literary and on-stage personas to his reckless, anger-driven personality at home and with loved ones. Interviews with Mailer’s nine children, a few of his six wives, friends, fellow writers, and even Mailer himself detail the “instinctual living” standard he held himself to, which built him up academically/literarily and tore holes in his personal life and character. Director-producer-co-writer Jeff Zimbalist and Mailer’s children thus unyieldingly dot his life through even the ugliest bits, demonstrating how Mailer sharpened mass American public opinion through emotional ferocity.

While Norman Mailer’s name may be unfamiliar to younger viewers, Come Alive is still an intellectual farm of differing philosophical and societal subjects through the scope of a distinctly brutish journalist. Mailer’s interest in the public sphere comes from his curiosities about the human psyche, morality amongst then-current sociopolitical climates, and sharpening public opinion. He admits to being the supreme devil’s advocate at different points. Throughout his career, he believed “There is a certain passion that is dying in American life; a pervasive distaste for bitter argument, for controversy. People are becoming less and less interested in looking at the ugly problems and debating questions that are not quickly answered.” Enlivening this dying passion meant unmasking his rage-filled behaviors within the public sphere; he would insult, bash, interrupt, and spotlight events and people most wouldn’t deem worthy of such attention – and it worked. From publicly broadcasted debates with feminists to inferences on the future of the U.S.’s economic state, Mailer brought about intellectually provocative discussions at significant personal cost. Come Alive elegantly paints a portrait of Mailer’s brutish yet ingenious mindset, ensuring nothing is left hidden – even the “ugly problems.”

Mailer was a man of two opposing forces. On one hand, according to him, he’s an orderly gentleman who loves his family and goes to brunch. Conversely, he’s a hypermasculine, dominating, relentless near-animal who mellows with age. While this commandeering ego whipped eyes onto him, it was also uncontrollable; verbally and physically abusing past wives, various affairs, and a near-death eye-stabbing of his second wife, Adele Morales, are just some of his sins. Come Alive criticizes Mailer as much as if not more than it praises him, recognizing that great writers can also be massive assholes.

However, with age, Mailer’s anger not only subsided, but he understood his past flaws and worked to move past them; he grew past them and continued his work without as much self-inflicted external pain. Come Alive doesn’t just demonstrate how arrogantly egotistical Mailer became; it represents the familiar patterns of growth present in everyone necessary to live. Thus, How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer is both a robust delve into Norman Mailer’s legacy and life and a reminder of the message he wanted read aloud: larger global systems of all kinds require room for growth and conversation.

In a divisive time in U.S. history and politics, where opinions continuously grow more rudely expressed, people trust each other less and less, and election campaigns become noisier, Mailer reminds us why mass-scale communication on vital issues is essential. Nobody can make considerate progress without encouraging all available voices to speak – regardless of their backgrounds and experiences. While the context of Mailer’s life in Come Alive occasionally feels too formulaically delivered, and the piece as a whole could’ve been tighter as a 2-3 episode miniseries, it still ponders over many questions with enough (masculinized) force to pass.

Opens Friday, 8/16 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Norman Mailer’s daughter Maggie will be present for a Q&A following the 7:00 showing on Monday, 8/19