Reviews – Film
July 2007
Beatmag’s woman in New York, ‘Shooting People’ director and film festival stalwart Ingrid Kopp, gives us the rundown on some music cinema treats coming our way…
I can happily declare that SXSW in Austin, Texas is my favourite film festival in the world. Held every March, and known better in the UK as an industry-heavy music festival, it actually brings together film, music and interactive elements in a way that always generates a great atmosphere of creativity and excitement. There is always some healthy cross-fertilisation between the different elements and the film fest pays tribute to its music sibling with the 24 Beats Per Second strand which spotlights music documentaries. Here are a few of the best I saw this year.
AJ Schack’s ‘Kurt Cobain: About A Son’ is a visual treat constructed from 25 hours of previously unheard interviews with Cobain, conducted by Michael Azerrad for his 1993 book ‘Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana’. People expecting a traditional rock biopic might be disappointed but I found it hypnotizingly beautiful and was reminded how funny and insightful Cobain could be (as well as morbid and self-obsessed!). His voice is accompanied by images from the places where he lived: Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. About a Son was shot on film (a rarity for a documentary these days) and it looks gorgeous – a series of often abstract images that work together like stanzas in a poem. There is not so much as a photograph of Cobain until the end of the film. Perhaps even more surprisingly it uses none of his music, instead featuring a score by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Nirvana producer Steve Fisk, as well as songs by bands Cobain loved, including the Melvins and The Vaselines. Oh, and Queen! Weeks later, I still keep thinking about this film, Cobains’s voice and the beautiful, dark, depressing landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Sitting in the dark, listening to this, had a powerful effect. Towards the end of the film Courtney Love yells down the stairs to Kurt, interrupting the interview, and I got goosebumps, as though they were in the cinema with me.
Michael Tully’s ‘Silver Jew’ was shot in only a couple of days and it creates a remarkably intense portrait of reclusive Silver Jews frontman and poet David Berman, as he embarks on a short tour of Israel with his band. I didn’t know much about them before I watched the film, but this didn’t matter because David has a poet’s way with words and his take on the world is always interesting. It also makes him a frustratingly slippery subject, impossible to pin down. Tully doesn’t ask him about his history of drug abuse and depression. The damage is evident, but it’s refreshing that this doesn’t become a film about yet another fucked-up artist. Berman doesn’t play live very often but the live music segments captured here are perhaps the least interesting element of the film. The DIY production values make these scenes feel like bad bootlegs and the sound is too raw. The music is almost besides the point in this film anyway. I don’t mean that as a criticism, it’s simply that it really is Berman himself who’s the focus. Watching him grapple with his newfound dedication to Judaism is often very moving.
Scott Walker is now in his early sixties and last released ‘The Drift’ on 4AD Records, his first album in over 10 years. ‘Scott Walker: 30 Century Man’ is a wholly fascinating film about a man who has remained pretty much unknown to us since he reached Number 1 in 1966 singing ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ with The Walker Brothers. Walker allowed director Stephen Kijak to interview him on camera as he recorded ‘The Drift’, and he is surprisingly frank and likeable. His influence is discussed here by a pretty classy selection of enamoured musicians, including David Bowie (the film’s executive producer), Radiohead, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno and Damon Albarn. Walker’s music is, well, weird. I have to admit that I appreciate it more than I enjoy it – but this film has inspired me to listen to more of it, with less apprehension.
Craig Zobel’s ‘The Great World Of Sound’ is not a documentary, but this pitch-perfect film, made on a tiny budget, is achingly real at times. Martin (Pat Healy) answers an ad from a shady record company looking for music producers. He and his new partner Clarence (the excellent Kene Holliday) travel around the American South where the company has placed more ads looking for undiscovered talent. The audition scenes take place in motel rooms with fake gold discs propped up on the walls, and the musicians are not actors but locals who really did answer the ads. And the catch is that the musicians are to pay 30 per cent of any recording fees. Martin starts to feel increasingly uneasy about what his company is doing to these people, some of them talented, some of them not, most of them poor, all of them desperate for a break. The film makes you laugh and squirm in equal parts, but there are no cheap laughs here. ‘Great Wall Of Sound’ has a big heart and there is real emotion in the scenes between the people selling dreams and those buying. I really loved this film and was thrilled that it was picked up for distribution during SXSW. Hopefully it will be playing in British cinemas soon.
‘Great World Of Sound’ director Craig Zobel co-produced David Gordon Green’s debut feature ‘George Washington’, which was released and adored back in 2000. It turns out that many SXSW filmmakers have links to Green, and now a whole new movement has been christened, describing the work made by the directors following in his wake: mumblecore. Mumblecore films are the ultra-indie creations – ‘Hannah Takes The Stairs’ is the current defining example – screening at SXSW this year that respected film blogger and journalist Anthony Kaufman points out are “far closer to the origins of ‘70s and ‘80s American indie cinema than just about anything in [Sundance’s] Dramatic Competition.” Another label for this genre is ‘Slackavetes’, in recognition of its debt to John Cassavetes. Aaron Hillis at Cinephiliac has drawn a lovely diagram to show how all the peeps making these films are connected (www.cinephiliac.com). Meanwhile, Andrew O’Hehir at Salon argues that the narrative features at SXSW this year were divided between the mumblecore gang and the Grindhouse camp, lead by Robert Rodriguez and his films about “shotgun-wielding hobos” (www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/03/13/sxsw_2/index.html), and that SXSW has become a festival that produces a “kind of long-term, deep-focus forecast of film-making themes and trends that aren’t quite on the mainstream radar screen.” The future of film, or a bunch of hipsters farting in a jar? Maybe a little of both… but I love these films and these are some great filmmakers. Go SXSW!
