Chopra artfully reveals ‘Kobe Bryant’s Muse’ in new documentary.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Showtime has released a documentary that goes behind the scenes of Kobe Bryant’s storied NBA career, directed by Gotham Chopra, son of the famous — and sometimes controversial — new-age guru and author Deepak Chopra.
“Kobe Bryant’s Muse,” according to Showtime, goes behind the stats to explore “the mentorships, allies, and rivalries that have helped shape his stellar 18-year tenure in the NBA.”
Chopra approached the documentary with a unique angle, limiting the interviews to solely Bryant himself.
In the film, Bryant — who served as executive producer — delves into his life story extensively. He speaks of growing up on the Italian peninsula, where his father played professional basketball, and also discusses becoming a high school phenom before moving directly to the NBA.
He speaks of his wife, Vanessa, and his kids, and recounts his feelings of self-reproach and dread when he realized he might lose his family after being infamously accused in a rape scandal, but more than anything else, Bryant explicates on why he’s decided to embrace the villainous role that he has garnered over the past decade.
The ferocious tenacity that Bryant evokes is his “muse.”
According to the A.V. Club’s assessment of the film:
It’s a beautiful-looking apologia … from the stunning helicopter shots of the Staples Center to the stark images of Bryant struggling to pick up metal balls with his toes after his injury … One benefit to Bryant coming of age in the public eye is that there’s video of almost everything important that’s ever happened to him, and Chopra makes good use of it all, dwelling on the baskets Bryant missed in a key playoff game at the start of his NBA career, and even digging up the footage of when Bryant first met Vanessa on the set of a music video.
Meanwhile, Bryant tells his tale with a kind of cruel inevitability: He was a loner, he fell in love, he betrayed that love, and then he found a way to draw on his disgust to make himself stronger.
Before working on “Kobe Bryant’s Muse,” Chopra released “Decoding Deepak” in 2012, which explored the complicated relationship between himself and his father. In 2004, Newsweek magazine hailed him as one of the “most powerful and influential” South Asians worth watching.
Gotham Chopra is also the co-founder of Liquid Comics (formerly Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation), an entertainment company based in Los Angeles and Bengaluru, India. As part of Liquid Comics, Gotham works with creators to develop graphic novels and is also responsible for packaging and producing the books as they evolve into games, films, and more.
At present, he is collaborating with notable performers such as John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Nicolas Cage, Hugh Jackman, John Moore, and Ed Burns, as well as media companies including Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Sony, Reliance, UTV and others.