'Itzhak,' by Alison Chernick

As often happens in the world of celebrity, performers who reach legendary status become lost in the vicissitudes of fame. The public loses sight of the person behind the art, seeing only the performance, the accolades, the glamour. It doesn’t matter what field — film, sports, or in Perlman’s case, classical music.

Rough start, quick rise

Perlman is perhaps the preeminent classical violinist of our age. He has received numerous Grammy and Emmy awards, the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan in 1986, the National Medal of Art from President Bill Clinton in 2000, Kennedy Center Honors in 2003, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013. These are only a few of the awards heaped on Perlman in his career of more than 60 years.

Throughout the course of Itzhak, Chernick fills in much of Perlman’s biography. His parents immigrated from Poland to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. Perlman was born in Tel Aviv, and as a child he contracted a severe case of polio, leaving his legs permanently paralyzed.

The family immigrated to New York to enable the young music prodigy to pursue his studies. The teenaged Perlman began his ascent to fame with two appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958 and another in 1964.

Love and respect

Chernick’s cameras follow Perlman through his busy and often glamorous days. He hobnobs with heads of state and mixes it up with rock stars — one segment shows him rehearsing for a performance with Billy Joel. We also see him puttering in the kitchen, preparing dinner for his dear friend, actor Alan Alda.

Chernick shows us how Perlman interacts with his beloved family, including his spirited and unpretentious wife of over 50 years, Toby. We see the warm, personal touch he gives to his students at the Juilliard School. And we watch him navigate the obstacles of his disability with stoicism and a complete lack of self-pity.

The picture the film paints is so rosy it invites suspicion that the portrait of the man is being glossed over for the cameras. But the interactions between Perlman and the multitude of his family, friends, and colleagues are so warm and genuine that it allays skepticism.

Chernick helps keep the film grounded by giving plenty of face time to Toby. A classical violin student when she met and eventually married Itzhak, they have built a life together based on love, respect, and a transcendent passion for music. No-nonsense Toby sums up the success of her marriage, saying, “It’s not just important that you love the man you marry. It’s more important that you respect the man you marry.”

The overarching theme of Itzhak Perlman’s life is, of course, music. Performing, listening, teaching — music, in some form, suffuses every moment of every day. While the film offers ample examples of Perlman’s sublime artistry, it also allows him to explain what music means to him, the joy and transcendence he experiences with it, and how he strives to share those emotions with his audiences and students.

Itzhak is not an exceptional documentary, but its subject is. Perlman is a man of towering genius and stratospheric celebrity who has overcome debilitating obstacles and who, for all his acclaim, has remained in essential ways the nice Jewish kid next door. That only makes us want to listen all the more closely.