Bill W

Abstract

Bill W. considers the life—and life's work—of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (aa), Bill Wilson (1895–1971). The film is the first feature-length documentary about the man behind one of the twentieth century's most successful nondenominational fellowship movements and a source of hope to millions of people struggling with alcoholism and other addictions. The first work by two young filmmakers, Bill W. is a highly sympathetic but uneven, and eventually unsatisfying, tribute film. The film evokes well aa's cultural milieu: emerging out of the depression in the wake of Prohibition's repeal, yet perfectly suited to the suburban and corporate postwar cultures of the 1950s and 1960s, when face-to-face recruitment such as Tupperware parties and traveling salesman abounded. World War II destabilized community and family relations by significantly increasing geographic mobility, and aa served as a surrogate support network for rootless Americans whose hometown ties had been severed...