“You’re gonna destroy me with this stupid movie that I let you do, that I’m resisting because you’re annoying,” says Marc Maron in the opening minutes of Are We Good? Even if you don’t know Maron’s work, the implied wink with his delivery is obvious. The exterior is gruff and grumpy and the real subtext is that he simply can’t understand why anyone would care to follow him around.

It’s not false modesty. Rather he sees his work and where it has led as what’s interesting. Whether we’re talking about the alt comedy scene, his TV series, or his two decades as an interviewer on his award-winning podcast.–that’s interesting. But Maron himself? Even he seems to think he’s just a grumpy shlub most people don’t really want to hang out with. Nevermind asking them to sit through an entire documentary about.

But Are We Good? isn’t an effort to put Maron’s legacy on a pedestal. It isn’t trying to convince him of his own greatness or even to track his showbiz highs and lows. It’s an in-depth portrayal of the realities of grief and the creative process. It’s a movie about the way it all mingles with the self-doubt that’s always been there and the brand new sense of loss that seems to be threatening to kill you.

That’s why ten minutes into the film, director Steven Feinartz hits us with what we’ll come to understand as one of the most devastating and impactful moments of Maron’s life.

It’s two months into lockdown and Maron’s partner director Lynn Shelton is sick. A few days later, she’s dead from a rare, undiagnosed blood disease. Clips from Maron’s Instagram live videos show him breaking the news to us. An audio clip from his podcast lets us hear his voice crack. Suddenly, I’m in tears over a woman I never knew. It feels like a stranger’s heart is breaking in my hands.

Feinartz follows this moment with a hard cut to Maron in an alley attempting to change a tire, cursing all the while. This is what best sums up the magic of what Are We Good? achieves. It’s a breathtaking encapsulation of the way profound, debilitating sadness exists right alongside the mundane. Are We Good? takes every opportunity it can to remind you that neither truth exists in a vacuum.

This is also the real genius of Feinartz. In narrowing his lens to the journey with grief and how it fits into the context of Maron’s life, the film expands. What might have been a film about one relatively extraordinary guy (Maron’s humility be damned) changes. It becomes a true exploration of what it means to exist in the world. About how it feels to constantly redefine your relationship to it. 

Are We Good? is about how absolutely grueling it can be to simply exist as a human being in the world. It’s about the way “this, too, shall pass” doesn’t just refer to sadness, but happiness, too. It’s all fleeting and it’s all fluctuating.

Reflecting on his time with Lynn, Maron says, “Everything was supposed to work out… and it didn’t.”
But what Are We Good? reminds us is that life, if you’re lucky, will go on anyway and maybe that’s actually a good thing. You’ll grow and things will change and the grief will still be there, of course, but so will so many other new and beautiful things. Feinartz and Maron both understand that the answer to the question “are we good” is always yes and no. Sometimes a little more of one than the other and sometimes asking it matters more than the answering.

Are We Good? grabs the mic in theatres starting October 3.

Are We Good? Trailer: