For the Love of Spock (2016)

When months ago I committed to catching up with The Big Bang Theory (I had seen some episodes of the first few seasons multiple times over the years but never watched the whole thing), I saw an episode in which Sheldon is asked to be a part of a documentary about Spock which was being made by Leonard Nimoy's son, Adam. That's how I learnt about For the Love of Spock and, even though I'm not a Star Trek fanatic, I was immediately interested in it.

As I mentioned above, Adam Nimoy's documentary was supposed to focus entirely on the character of Spock, but, when Leonard Nimoy passed away in 2015 while the film still was in the making, Adam decided to explore the life of his father as well, analysing both his professional and private life, putting under scope his relationship with his father as well.

The documentary does a great job in chronicling the life of the actor, starting from his move to Los Angeles in 1940s, following him as he struggled to provide for his family in the 1950s as a working actor as he never worked in a project, where it was a movie or a TV series, for more than two weeks at a time, until his big break in the 1960s, when he was cast to play a character half human, half alien on some futureless, as some newspapers said back in the day, science fiction TV series. I don't think I need to tell you how that went. 

Having only watched the Star Trek movies without being really a fan of the franchise, I found For the Love of Spock to be incredibly informative. I was surprised to learn that Leonard Nimoy came up with the idea of the Vulcan salute and what it meant to him --it represents the Hebrew letter Shin which means Almighty God as well as Shalom. He saw this blessing performed in an Orthodox synagogue when he was a child and was impressed by it. That's why he chose it.

Gravitas Ventures

For the Love of Spock shows the dark side of Leonard Nimoy as well, from his alcoholism problems (which I was not aware of), to the damage notoriety did to his life, especially how it created an imbalance that damaged the relationship with his family, especially with his son, Adam. The part when Adam reflects on the relationship with his father, including how as a child, he had to put up with having to share his father with other kids, his fans, is the most effective.

It's not a perfect film though, something is indeed missing. At some point, we see the cover of the first autobiography written by Leonard Nimoy, I Am Not Spock, in which Nimoy (thank you, Wikipedia) points out how different he is from Spock, and how frustrating it is to be always identified as Spock. While he eventually made peace with the notoriety that came with it, he didn't always have a perfect nor easy relationship with the character and that doesn't transpire from the documentary.

But ultimately, For the Love of Spock is a great tribute both to the character of Spock and (especially) the man behind it, Leonard Nimoy, and it's definitely worth the time.