A Gifted Artist Who Knew Why People Need Stories

Rob Reiner was many things — an accomplished comic actor before applying his talents to directing, and for decades an outspoken advocate for his beliefs. Above all, he was one of Hollywood’s great humanists.

Think about the very best of his oeuvre — an astonishing run that included multiple films that Reiner lived to see enter the pantheon. All of them get their electric charge from a precise, focused attention on human behavior. A Reiner character may be deluded (as in “This Is Spinal Tap”) or neurotic (“When Harry Met Sally …”) or outright deranged (“Misery”). But their personality will, every time, reveal itself to the viewer in a way that feels like meeting someone out there in the world beyond the cinema.

The gruesome circumstances of the deaths of Reiner and his wife, Michele, are vivid in the news right now. But as time passes, Reiner will, one hopes, be remembered first for the thought and heart he put into telling stories. In his understanding that telling and sharing stories is what makes us who we are, and in his gift for making us laugh, cry and most of all, care, he was the very best of the filmmaking community.

This extended to his enormously collaborative nature: A writer’s director, Reiner lent craft and verve to help make the best work of Nora Ephron, Aaron Sorkin and William Goldman shine. He also had a remarkable way with talent. Meg Ryan might not have been a romantic-comedy leading lady, or Christopher Guest a comedy brand name, or Kathy Bates a film star at all, had Reiner not allowed them to do what they now seemed destined to do. Bates’ performance as Annie Wilkes seems illustrative: A theater actor only just breaking into film, Bates delivered a perfectly calibrated performance as a stalker-fan in “Misery.” Reiner has supreme control, though, and keeps the performance from spinning into camp. Every decision of Annie’s comes to make a certain kind of sense, as we eventually begin to understand her twisted point of view.

And that’s just one of Reiner’s great characters! Think of Annette Bening, trying and failing to keep herself from being dazzled by her new beau in “The American President.” Or the boys forging what they believe will be a lifelong bond in “Stand by Me,” or the lieutenant willing to challenge his superior in “A Few Good Men.” Or — framing a story of fantastical derring-do — the grandfather reading to his grandson in “The Princess Bride.” That movie is one of Reiner’s most remembered for everything that happens in the kingdom of Florin (Inigo Montoya, “as you wish,” and all the rest). But it is, in the end, just about a family trying to share a story.

Beyond his films, Reiner was as much a character in the public imagination as, say, Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. Part of this stemmed from his experience as an actor: A generation of TV viewers remember him as Archie Bunker’s son-in-law on “All in the Family.” Avuncular and quick-witted as a performer, Reiner popped up as recently as this year on “The Bear”; his mere presence made one hope more ardently that the sandwich window would succeed, because it would really be a shame to let Rob Reiner down.

He was also a mainstay of television news, sharing insights and perspectives that came from a deep well of feeling for the dispossessed. It’s telling that, even among most conservatives, tributes to Reiner’s work and life have been heartfelt. In his compassion and his ability to have a conversation that made even political adversaries feel included and welcome, Reiner was a tribune from an era that was not so very long ago but that has now passed.

That’s evidenced by the president’s grotesque response to Reiner’s passing, which needs to be acknowledged if only to decisively draw a contrast with Reiner himself. What more needs to be said? Donald Trump’s taunting those who mourned Reiner and his wife was inhuman. And perhaps the worst thing that can be said about it is that Reiner, who sought the good and the interesting and the lovable and the human in all of us, would have been utterly baffled by it.