By David Daniel
All of this inner turmoil and outer accomplishment makes Enigma as close to a standard sports documentary as a Cybertruck is to a F-150.
Aaron Rodgers: Enigma (Netflix Original Documentary) 3 episodes (200 minutes)
Aaron Rodgers in a scene from Enigma. Photo: Netflix
Near the end of Enigma, a new Netflix documentary about Aaron Rodgers, there’s a segment that takes place before he must make a decision that could determine his future in football. He undertakes a darkness retreat. Set against the blare and glare of a NFL stadium on game day, these three days of total quiet and dark in a tiny windowless cabin in Oregon serve as an objective correlative for Rodgers’ long fire walk between two worlds. His quest: to balance the introvert who meditates while seeking spiritual adventures with the extrovert who, as quarterback, thrives as “an alpha leader of men.”
Fewer than 1700 players make up the rosters of the National Football League and those who make the list are the best in the world. Most of these performers are spear carriers in the opera of sport (one of life’s rare meritocracies). There are only a few divos in this elite group — players who become household names. Aaron Rodgers is one. At 41 he is the oldest player currently in the NFL. Even overlooking his longevity (the average pro football career is 3.3 years; Rodgers has played 20), there’s enough strong material here to warrant a lengthy documentary. For the pro athlete, whose job is to continually titrate performance and metrics, Rodgers has made an impressive score. Super Bowl champion, four-time league MVP, ten-time Pro-Bowler, various records going back to high school and his time at UCal, and 20 seasons in the NFL. Adding poignancy to this record: several serious injuries and the reality that Father Time is coming.
Spooled out in a three-episode arc, Enigma is a layered portrait of a thoughtful, articulate individual whose controversies, at times self-inflicted, have sometimes threatened to overshadow his athletic achievements — achievements he continues to make. Two weeks ago, despite his team being eliminated from postseason play, Rodgers became only the fifth player in the NFL’s century-old history to throw 500 touchdown passes (his count stands at 503).
All of this inner turmoil and outer accomplishment makes Enigma as close to a standard sports documentary as a Cybertruck is to a F-150.
Episode 1, “Becoming,” finds Rodgers in 2023 being inked with an elaborate tattoo: a dragon biting its own tail. The design suggests a figure 8, his jersey number for his new team, the Jets. It is also, he muses, be a symbol of infinity. The episode sketches his backstory. He grew up in Chico, California where, by his freshman year in high school, undersized at 5’6” (though later to reach 6’2”) he was already displaying a taste for football and a distaste for the strictures of his small-town rearing. Recruited at UCal after a junior college year, he found Berkeley’s tumult both a stimulus and a challenge that would set him on a path of self-development, spiritual seeking … and professional football.
Episode 2, “Awakening,” presents a travel map of Rodgers’ inner journeys, including ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica and his evolving religious trek away from what he calls the “shame, guilt, judgment” cycle instilled by his conservative Christian upbringing. His comeback from a serious ankle injury, suffered in the opening moments of his heralded –and disastrous — 2023-24 season debut with the New York Jets, reflects a steely determination. It also sheds light on the zero-sum nature of sports.
Episode 3, “Reckoning,” looks at what Rodgers’ efforts have wrought. He has experienced the various manifestations of being a “football hero.” He also has exerted a presence on the public scene, including a successful run on Jeopardy, a dozen years doing State Farm Insurance commercials, and kibitzing on TV’s late night talk circuit. But publicity and star-status attention can have an exhausting effect on a career. Sports feeds a continually updated drumbeat of conflict and controversy. Athletes are the new gladiators. Not only are there Monday morning quarterbacks to be placated: add in the legions of journalists, pundits, and eager-eyed analysts whose livelihoods depend on sniffing out drama. When the individual has achieved household name status, the whirligig expands exponentially.
Even for a public who wouldn’t know a slot receiver from a slot machine, Rodgers’ life makes for rich tabloid fodder. In 2021 he tripped over his jock strap. When asked whether he was vaccinated for Covid, he responded that he was “immunized.” That set off a controversy that pushed him into the crosshairs of a raging public debate. The backlash was swift and effective. Sponsors dropped him; he was accused (with no evidence) of being a Sandy Hook denier. It’s hard to escape the stain of being called a dangerous purveyor of misinformation. Rodgers made efforts to contextualize his views, eventually admitting he wished he’d never made the comment. Still, he became yet another casualty of our absurdly polarized discourse.
Enigma proffers a busy storyline that might slither down any number of rabbit holes. Judiciously, it does not. Following documentary tradition, the proceedings are relatively honest — unrehearsed and unfiltered, and agnostic on many issues. Rodgers’ talk is refreshingly free of sports cliches and, when speaking with quiet passion of his inner journey, bereft of New Age bromides. There are off-kilter moments. Delivering a pregame pep talk to his new Jets teammates — most of them a decade and more younger — Rodgers slips into profanity-laced leave-it-all-on-the-field-y’all bro-speak that feels a little off. He isn’t quite sure how to bridge the generation gap. Overall though, Rodgers emerges as thoughtful and introspective. He may occasionally be flip, but Rodgers generally comes across as a humble athlete who strives to be real.
Aaron Rodgers in a scene from Enigma. Photo: Netflix
Documentary filmmaking has been in a period of renaissance and reformation in recent years, giving the durable medium new legs. Technology is no doubt driving this transformation, supplying new techniques for shooting and editing and manipulating time. On top of that there’s the rise of streaming platforms hungry for content to fill the hours. Critically, there’s the availability of funding. Netflix alone is said to spend around $1.1 billion on documentary programming. Add other funding sources, the National Endowment for the Arts and private capital among them, and the monetary ante goes up. Simultaneously, new generations of writers and filmmakers are reimagining how to frame narratives to satisfy a viewership that has an insatiable appetite for gripping, true-life stories.
Enigma reveals Rodgers at an inflection point in his career. Literally, as you read this, the man is deciding his future: should he give football another year or get out. Throughout his sports career he has been committed to perfectionism. Rodgers has come to consider the frame of mind as harmful: you are “always teetering on self-loathing . . . because . . . [it] means you aren’t good enough.” These days he is pondering what direction to take — now what? It isn’t clear if his journey has freed him of his abusive self-scrutiny, but he seems at peace.
Viewers expecting a traditional sports bio may find themselves challenged to the point of disappointment. Enigma doesn’t take the customary hero track, doing without endless clips of great plays (which are all available on YouTube). The doc maintains its focus on a complex individual, one who given to unresolved introspection. The series ends with a closeup on Rodgers as he muses, “It could be my last year…” then adding, with a cryptic smile, “but it could not be.”
David Daniel is a contributor to the Arts Fuse and https://richardhowe.com/ and sometimes teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where he won an Outstanding Teacher award. His recent essay on Bob Dylan appeared in the Boston Globe. He can be reached at [email protected]