A time capsule from recent Chicago fine-dining history, Jack C. Newell’s documentary “42 Grams” is the latest nonfiction film addressing a specific, narrow story of the city’s restaurant culture, and the obsessives feeding its reputation.
Now available on iTunes, the film receives its local theatrical premiere starting Saturday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with Newell introducing the four screenings. Filmed several years ago, it’s a portrait of chef Jake Bickelhaupt, who ran an illegal underground “guestaurant” called Sous Rising with his then-wife and business partner, Alexa Welsh. In 2014 they took the leap and opened their own tiny Uptown establishment on the up-high, as opposed to the down-low. The restaurant, 42 Grams, sucked everything the couple had in terms of emotional, financial and psychic capital. Accolades followed, and then …
The movie presents a peculiar spoiler issue, since the fate of the restaurant is well-known in Chicago restaurant circles. News cycles of openings and closings, even among the Michelin-starred few, are brutally fast in this realm.
The question for a documentarian, afforded many, many hours of relatively unguarded access to a chef’s travails, becomes this: How to shape the footage in light of the ending, or what happens after the end?
A combustible taskmaster, self-critical in the extreme, Wisconsin native Bickelhaupt blows his cool in full view of the diners in some scenes. The tension in the kitchen is evident, because the kitchen is right there, in the diners’ laps.
As the pressures mount, we hear more from Welsh, seen at one point tape-measuring the precise distance between place mats on the counter, as she takes responsibility for a dying parent. (Three of their four parents, in fact, died during the timeline covered by the documentary.)
A lot happened after Newell called “42 Grams” a day. The film concludes with two terse, abrupt pieces of end-credits information that color everything we’ve just seen. Some will find this effective. But you wonder: Would Newell’s doc have benefited from a significant reshaping, given that last-minute update?
The same frustrating question presented itself with another Chicago food doc, “Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story” (2016), which I saw at South by Southwest and is now widely available. Cantu died by suicide after the bulk of the documentary was in the can, but the filmmakers had basically finished their work already. They embraced the time-capsule aspect of their footage, in other words, for better or worse.
Like “42 Grams,” “Insatiable” is the work of a filmmaker granted considerable access. It hints at what drives chefs of all socio-economic backgrounds to gamble and experiment and sacrifice their personal lives. “For Grace,” a Chicago food doc (co-directed by former Tribune writer Kevin Pang) about chef Curtis Duffy and the 2012 opening of Grace, falls into the same genre, and the same stylistic approaches. These are all relatively tame, straightfoward nonfiction narratives about nervy, risk-prone characters with a demon or two. The food’s gorgeous, always. But the footage often looks promotional — as if commissioned by the restaurant’s backers. And you wonder if the filmmakers traded access for a willingness to ask a tough question or two.
I admit to being on foreign turf here. I come to a film such as “42 Grams” or “For Grace” or “Insatiable” simultaneously embarrassed and bitter about never having eaten at any of Chicago’s most rarified and distinguished emporiums for molecular gastronomy. I’m like the guy who wades into the deep end of a high-end international film festival, never having seen a single subtitled film.
So be it. But in such a rich and dazzling foodie town, why hasn’t Chicago inspired a truly excellent documentary on the subject?
Usually a documentary runs into its own limitations by trying to take on too much. But this may be a different story. The movies mentioned above all deal with chefs who trained under the late Charlie Trotter, a famously divisive and controversial trailblazer who ended up getting left behind by his own proteges. That story has been told in print, notably by former Tribune writer Mark Caro, and it’s a doozy.
All roads, littered with blown tempers, ex-wives and the quest for the shock of the new, lead back to Trotter. They lead back to what and how his alums learned from him, the good and the bad, the bullying along with the encouragement.
Maybe that multipronged subject will be the first excellent documentary about Chicago dining. It’d have to be tough, and skeptical, and full of contradictions. In other words, it’d have to be honest, maybe a little disruptive. And not worry so much about making the food look ravishing.
Then again: The food looked ravishing in “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” David Gelb’s wonderful 2011 doc on the Michelin three-star, 10-seat restaurant located in a Tokyo subway station. In that film, however, the human drama reigned supreme. The aging protagonist took center stage, but he was a tough nut, and Gelb found a way to crack him, with tact but with an eye for the telling detail and the unspoken tensions. The restaurant’s setting was so novel yet so approachable, it made the seriousness with which the sushi was prepared by Jiro and his competitive sons all the more striking.
That film’s sly excellence is elusive. And it’s worth studying. The less-than-helpful personality trait linking “42 Grams,” “For Grace” and “Insatiable,” all of which have their points of interest, is this: a take-it-easy, kid-gloves approach to a business, and an obsession, that drives chefs to greatness, distraction, failure, invention — sometimes all in the same meal.
“42 Grams” screens at 8 p.m. Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday, 8 p.m. Wednesday and 6 p.m. Feb. 1 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; www.siskelfilmcenter.org. Director Newell introduces all screenings.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
