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It\u2019s in the rules: Every comedian will get at least one major documentary dedicated to them before we\u2019ve all departed this earth. And quite a few of them will have been directed, co-directed, or produced by Judd Apatow, who\u2019s already given us Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling<\/a>, and George Carlin\u2019s American Dream<\/a>. At first glance, the idea of Apatow making a film (alongside co-director Neil Berkeley) about Maria Bamford<\/a> might not seem like a particularly noteworthy endeavor. Bamford, 55, is an active comedian<\/a> still in the middle of an influential<\/a> and admittedly<\/a> offbeat<\/a> career<\/a>. Isn\u2019t it too early to try and provide perspective and context on her life and work?<\/p>\n Well, maybe not. The peculiar charm of Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story, premiering at Sundance, lies in the way it\u2019s driven by genuine curiosity about its subject. Apatow doesn\u2019t seem to have come to this film with a thesis and a story and an outline already in hand. He\u2019s perplexed and fascinated by Bamford, who exists in a strange category: She\u2019s won awards and gained quite a bit of mainstream visibility and success (thanks to her many voice roles, her once-notorious Target ads, and her short-lived<\/a> but well-loved Netflix show Lady Dynamite, along with seemingly a million other efforts), but her brand of humor is something of an acquired taste, built as it is on confessional discomfort<\/a>. She foregrounds her mental challenges, her nervous breakdowns, her suicide attempts, her fraught relationships with her parents, all the things other comedians merely nod to. \u201cNinety-nine percent of comedians will tell you they have anxieties, and you understand it\u2019s a shtick,\u201d Conan O\u2019Brien says in the film. \u201cMaria is like a lobster whose shell has been removed.\u201d As Bamford herself puts it while receiving a prescription for the tremors she gets from her mood stabilizers: \u201cWeakness is the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n In the world of comedy nerds, Bamford and her work are beyond well known. Those of us who haven\u2019t been following her career may still find ourselves captivated by our first glimpse of her in this picture. Welcoming Apatow and his film crew into her home, she comes off as both aggressively cheerful and hopelessly fragile, as if she could have an immediate meltdown if she were to stop smiling. This is part of her persona. And while it seems like an act, it clearly isn\u2019t; it\u2019s when Bamford \u201cacts normal\u201d that she\u2019s pretending, which she admits has led to some confusion and conflict throughout her life.<\/p>\n Watching her perform, we enter a universe where up is down and fake is real, and our disorientation makes her humor essential: She becomes our guide through this inside-out reality of hers. A lot of comedy documentaries have pro forma talking-head interviews with other comics opining on the supposed uniqueness and boldness of the subject matter. This time, we believe them. When Patton Oswalt says that he didn\u2019t initially get Bamford\u2019s humor, it makes sense, because at first her humor doesn\u2019t seem like humor at all; it feels like a cry for help. But that\u2019s also what makes it funny. Sort of. Maybe. Definitely.<\/p>\n Itself awkwardly poppy in a manner that reflects Bamford\u2019s own half-terrified merriment, Paralyzed by Hope charts the comedian\u2019s early years with a particular focus on her tortured relationship with her mother, a regular subject of her act. Always on diets and mood stabilizers and prone to manic episodes during which she might try to call the Pope or run the family car off the road, Maria\u2019s mother appears to have projected her own anxieties onto her daughter. But later in life, Mom also became a therapist and was fully supportive of Maria\u2019s work, often appearing in bits playing herself. Theirs is a fraught, passionate, loving, and contentious bond; when Bamford\u2019s mom dies during COVID lockdown, we feel the loss. But we also get it when Maria does one final weight-loss joke about her mother\u2019s death and talks about spreading her ashes at the Nordstrom shoe department. These are bits grounded in lived experience. (As is the bit about Maria\u2019s dad bringing her and her sister a box of now-useless dildos after their mother\u2019s death \u2014 something that actually happened.)<\/p>\n Bamford talks about having a particular type of obsessive-compulsive disorder involving unwanted thoughts \u2014 impulsive, intrusive ideas that one cannot control and that, if allowed to spiral, can become harmful. It sounds like a terrible condition, but also maybe a relatable one \u2014 everybody has had an unwanted thought or two, and one can imagine the horror of not being able to stop them from coming. Bamford keeps it in check with therapy, meds, and work. But it\u2019s also, perhaps, something of a superpower for a comedian to have, at least in small doses, allowing the mind to wander in unexplored and improper realms, which is at the root of their art. Watching Paralyzed by Hope, we start to understand why other comedians, including Apatow himself, would be so fascinated and electrified by Bamford\u2019s work. She lives on the front lines of a war others only occasionally allow themselves to fight.<\/p>\n Sign up for The Critics<\/p>\n A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n