Love, Antosha
I’ll admit that I haven’t really thought of Anton Yelchin much since his tragic passing in 2016. Of course, whenever a film of his that he had completed (like “Thoroughbreds”) would be released, but I cannot say his passing had a profound effect on me as a fan of film. Watching “Love, Antosha,” however, changes that. It not only made me realize just how deep his career actually was- I first took notice of him, as many did, in 2007’s “Charlie Bartlett,” though his first film was 2001’s “Hearts of Atlantis”- and I think some revisiting of some of those highlights is in order, in the near future.
The film begins with his parents, world-famous ice skaters, whom sold all of their possessions after his mother, Irina Korina, gave birth to him in Leningrad, and moved to the United States in 1989. There, they would raise Anton, and even though he did not take to his parents’s profession, he found himself a natural in front of the camera, acting and making movies with friends at a young age, and- by the time he was 11- he was acting in shows like “ER” and opposite actors like Anthony Hopkins. Garret Price’s film follows the full trajectory of his career from there, with his parents filling in the gaps with personal correspondences, home movies he directed, and journal entries where we get the image of a young man hungry for knowledge and life experience, and the desire to show it on the big screen.
The most striking revelation of the film comes early, when we learn that Anton was born with cystic fibrosis (which was not known to the public until after his death), and hearing how they kept it from him, while having to have him work on his respiratory breathing techniques, is something that took me back to when I had to do pulmonary rehab after my hospitalization in 2007, which resulted from a collapsed lung and pneumonia combo. When they finally revealed it to him after he had taken completely to acting, it’s great hearing how he managed to balance work and his health, inspiring even, all the while hearing from actors and directors he worked with over the years, friends who knew him at every stage of his life, and his personal thoughts, as read by his “Dying of the Light” co-star, Nicolas Cage. Anton was an actor loved and respected by so many, and watching this film, I had memories of the wonderful work he had done- the great showcases (big and small) he was given- and the talent we were robbed of because of a freak accident in 2016. If you’re wonder about the title- it’s how he would sign his letters to his parents. Antosha was his name in Russian. His legacy now includes this loving, and personal, documentary made in his honor.
