This must be the second most... ummm... fulfilling book I've read in recent times ('War and Peace' is a perennial favourite - now going through a second reading after decades - and 'A Man Called Ove' & 'When Breath Becomes Air' would probably take 3rd and 4th spots, though not comparable to no. 1 and 2 in terms of the vast span of time and characters covered).
Who of my generation (and probably the next too) doesn't know Charlie Chaplin? We've grown up laughing uproariously at the antics of Charlie (and probably of Lucy too). But who knew that behind Charlie's silent slapstick was such a poignant story of abject childhood poverty, deprivation and parental tragedy!
It's remarkable that Chaplin manages to keep the narrative on an even keel, even deadpan, and not bubbling with too much pathos, at least when dealing with his own story - his mother's repeated trysts with mental asylum, staying in Govt. orphanages, abandonment by his father, the works. Perhaps the most poignant episode is where his mother, after they come back from his father's funeral, has to sell household furniture so that the threesome (including Charlie's brother) can eat! But all this is narrated in a rather matter of fact way.
It's when he starts describing his rise in the show business that Chaplin's voice seems to get a new-found confidence, quite naturally. But even here, while an independent observer would marvel, mouth agape, at his meteoric progress from a pauper to a millionaire, Chaplin chooses to describe the minutiae rather than indulge in hyperbole. His initial struggles to make his own mark in Hollywood, struggling against restrictive studio contracts, and then coming into his own and starting his own studio and production ventures, are singularly instructive for an artiste as well as a shrewd businessman.
While Chaplin doesn't flinch from referring to his various flings and failed marriages, he states upfront that he'd not 'tell all' and would choose what to reveal, a blow for the concept of privacy which's become the in thing only now. And once he finds Oona, with whom his marriage lasts till the end, he also doesn't hold back from expressing in writing the extent of his love for her.
The last part of the book is quite heartbreaking, where Chaplin describes the events leading up to what was virtually his exile from the United States, then reeling under a strong anti-Communist hysteria post WW II. Charlie suffered for supporting the cause of Communists in fighting Hitler, against whom he campaigned personally apart from through 'The Great Dictator' (among the few of his talkies), but he steadfastly refused to back down from the cause even when intimidated by the Govt. agencies and the US media. He gets satisfaction, though, from being feted across Europe after he leaves US and settles in Switzerland.
An incomparable actor, director, composer and script-writer: Chaplin was all that. But most of all, he was a genuine, warmhearted (though not gullible) and courageous human being who rose beyond his circumstances and (much beyond the cliche) left his footprints on the sands of time...
