'Love, Antosha' Is A Moving, Poignant Tribute To Anton Yelchin [Review]

A poignant tribute to the late Anton Yelchin, Garret Price’s documentary “Love, Antosha” filters the young actor’s life through interviews with his collaborators and family. Narrated, in part, by Yelchin’s “Dying of the Light” collaborator, Nicholas Cage and produced by his “Like Crazy” director Drake Doremus (whom Price has served as an editor for), the documentary serves as an encapsulation of the profound impact Yelchin made during his all too short time as an actor. 

Proceeding chronologically through the actor’s life, “Love, Antosha” intermixes home movies with interviews with his parents, friends, and fellow film collaborators. While unable to move through every film that Yelchin was in, Price focuses on the films that made an impact on Yelchin, returning to, among others, “House of D,” “Hearts in Atlantis,” and, of course, “Star Trek.” Among those interviewed, including Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, John Cho, J.J. Abrams, and Jodie Foster, who all attest to Yelchin’s commitment to his craft and his willingness to experiment.  

Price often returns to a few different motifs, namely focusing on Yelchin’s lifelong fight with cystic fibrosis, a disorder that Yelchin kept to himself throughout this life. For the film, Yelchin’s ongoing, secret fight with CF exemplifies his willingness to push himself, never letting his disease dictate how he lived or worked. Further, Yelchin’s diary, tracking his own reactions to films and narrated by Cage, becomes the underlying tract that demonstrates just how much of a film scholar the actor was. As his parents recount in the film, Yelchin wanted to become a director and, in doing so, felt he needed to know everything about the medium beforehand.

At the forefront of Price’s film, Yelchin’s commitment to all forms of art emerges from the documentary, as his restlessness is noted time and again by his colleagues. Stewart and Lawrence, in fact, credit Yelchin with helping them discover the possibilities of acting. The mixing of personal and professional, such as when he records himself getting drunk for the first time in preparation for his role in “Alpha Dog,” demonstrate his co-star Ben Foster’s claim that Yelchin was always looking for new experiences. That he was a film actor, musician, photographer, and amateur director illuminates just how talented Yelchin was and, also, that he was just beginning to scratch the surface of his creative talents. 

When the film finally addresses his tragic death, at the hands of a malfunctioning car, it’s a stark reminder of the randomness that often takes our most talented actors too young. Yelchin was just beginning to move into a different phase of his career, leaving behind the precocious youths that he portrayed in “Alpha Dog,” “Charlie Bartlett,” and, to a lesser extent, the “Star Trek” series and moving into an auteur phase, working with the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Jeremy Saulnier, and others. He was even preparing to direct his first film, an homage to Scorcese’s “Taxi Driver.” 

“Love, Antosha” isn’t revelatory in its treatment of Yelchin’s life and career but it profoundly serves as a reminder of just how talented he was, and further reinforces the fact that he was just beginning to burgeon as a creative force. While the film does gloss over aspects of his life, alluding to, among other things, his romantic relationships, including one with Stewart, Price’s documentary is a loving eulogy for one of the most gifted actors of the last generation and, for fans of Yelchin, an absolute must-see. [B+]