Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sitting alone on an empty set, one of the great screen icons of the past 50 years takes a moment to reflect on his improbable success. “How did a frog make the big time?” he wonders in that unmistakable dulcet croak. An answer to Kermit the Frog’s question can be found in Jim Henson: Idea Man, a new biographical documentary directed by Ron Howard about the man behind (and the hand inside) the Muppets. Combining endearing backstage footage, archive interviews and present-day contributions from his family and former colleagues, it is a light-touch yet poignant tribute to Henson, who died in 1990. It paints him not just as a master puppeteer, but as an avant-garde artist and committed educator. The story begins with two ping pong balls and his mother’s green coat, objects to which the young Henson gave life with glue, scissors and an unfettered imagination. This proto-muppet (a portmanteau of “puppet” and “marionette”) would evolve into Kermit the Frog, who was later joined by a whole troupe of weird and whimsical characters devised and operated by Henson, his then-wife Jane and puppeteer (and later filmmaker) Frank Oz. Ad spots and variety-show cameos soon paved the way for the landmark children’s TV series Sesame Street in 1969 and then The Muppet Show in 1974, the madcap sketch show “fronted” by Kermit and the soignée Miss Piggy. A cultural phenomenon by the late 1970s, it was dubbed “the most original thing that ever happened on the box” by Orson Welles in a conversation with Henson featured here.Switching between clips from the shows and behind-the-scenes perspectives, the film both reminds us of the comic genius of Henson’s characters and reveals the craft that went into imbuing inanimate materials with physicality and personalities. The joy, too; scenes showing Henson and Oz cracking each other up as they improvise bits as Sesame Street odd couple Bert and Ernie don’t ruin the magic of muppetry, but enhance it.Idea Man is neither overly saccharine nor sanitised. Despite the involvement of Henson’s children and Disney, who acquired the rights to the Muppets franchise from the Jim Henson Company in 2004, it largely resists bland hagiography. Alongside tributes to Henson’s “superhuman” qualities is a recognition of his human flaws. We hear how his charming innocence was tempered with anxiety and worn down by success; how his ambition yielded intense dissatisfaction; how his relentless drive forced his wife to sacrifice her own aspirations and his children to share their father with the rest of the world’s kids.While the younger Hensons (all of whom are or were involved in the Jim Henson Company) are full of admiration for their father’s achievements, many of their memories give an affecting sense of his absence rather than of his presence. Given that he remained rather closed-off and unknowable even to those closest to him, it’s perhaps too much to expect Howard to crack the enigma of his subject in 110 minutes. But we do gain a renewed appreciation of his most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, muppetational work and legacy.★★★★☆On Disney+ from May 31
