The New Yorker at 100 operates under a probably safe assumption: that its impact on the viewer’s life is fairly substantial. A documentary on one of the world’s most notoriously erudite magazines written with the liberally educated in mind, probably won’t be watched by someone not already predisposed to pick up an issue. The film, then, is hagiographic by design. With buzzy celebrities of both the literary and media landscapes as fawning talking heads, and with archival footage galore, Marshall Curry’s Netflix documentary has almost a Bar-Mitzvah or wedding video feel, in which the only objective is to place its subject on the highest possible pedestal.

Which isn’t to say these ninety-seven minutes aren’t watchable or uninteresting, just superficial. As the title suggests, the film has been produced as part of a multi-platform, multimedia celebration of the magazine’s centennial; The New Yorker has also published a collection of its most lasting fiction and programmed a series of films at New York City’s Film Forum that all, in some way, relate to the magazine’s history. The film is more a celebration than it is a genuine historical appraisal.

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The New Yorker at 100 is Thin on History, Long on Flattery

Structured with that in mind, Curry’s film shuffles back and forth between the February 2025 publication of the 100th anniversary double-issue and key points in the company’s history, the latter of which is narrated by Julianne Moore. Amongst the A-listers who attest to the magazine’s majesty: Mad Men actor Jon Hamm, The Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng, Sex and the City‘s Sarah Jessica Parker, comedians Nate Bargatze and Aparna Nancherla, Oscar-winner Jesse Eisenberg, and the evergreen Molly Ringwald. All of them cut a pretty picture, but most of their testimonials amount to: this magazine is just great, isn’t it?

To be sure, Curry and the bevy of interviewed writers, editors and cartoonists do make a strong case for the magazine’s lasting legacy. Originally intended as a magazine for “Manhattan sophisticates” and not “little ladies from Dubuque,” as founder Harold Ross once put it, The New Yorker has grown into an internationally consumed literary and political rag known for both its extended non-fiction prose as well as its sometimes head-scratching cartoons. Its mascot, Eustice Tilly, a top-hat-clad, eye-piece using pretension, was chosen as a self-aware inside joke.

The magazine still has trouble shedding its élitist image – a word itself that speaks to its status, spelled as it is with the accent, as demanded by their notoriously specific in-house style guide suggests. Yet, it is impossible to ignore both the political and social impact it has had. John Hersey’s 30,000 word, 1946 exposé of the effects of the nuclear bomb on the people of Hiroshima created an awareness of American imperialism heretofore ignored. Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring – which became a bestselling book – was instrumental in creating both the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, and thus the modern environmental movement. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was the first in a long line of true crime writing which has directly translated into its fever pitch of popularity today in the form of podcasts and Netflix documentaries.

The film is at its best when detailing the extraordinarily rare precision of the editorial team, from its fact-checking that was once described as the “colonoscopy” of editing to its line-by-line copy editing process in which every word is scrutinized. Less present but equally interesting is the revealing of just how lettered the staff is even outside their writing; one of the cartoon editors is fond of Japanese calisthenics to break up her time at the desk.

It’s easy to lionize the past, but the present is another question, and the film does get tantalizingly close to interrogating its own journalistic methods. In one section, multiple journalists question how to best report on President Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally in the run-up to the 2024 election with its obvious parallels to the 1939 Nazi rally by the Bund at the same venue. But, instead of diving deeper into these moments, they universally come to the same conclusion: that the magazine operates above the rest.

Perhaps that is true, but it is a bit hard to fully assess the historical significance of an institution if it isn’t being fully transparent or forthcoming about anything beyond the most surface-level details. The magazine’s journalistic integrity is strong and its writers are perennially amongst the best in the world. But beyond that assumption, there’s just not a ton here beyond the flowers. Whatever the case, the magazine will no doubt continue its reign in the literary publishing world, and in the liberal élite world, no matter how you spell that, or any word.