This is saved from a complete pan by the brief prospect of a joyful Jimmy Page listening to a Link Wray record in his incredibly fabulous, shelf and album-ridden music room. The rock god is just an enthusiastic, grateful kid.
Also, because the Edge seems like a deeply decent guy, and it registers. (As for Jack White, let’s just say that maybe he’s still young.) Other than that, this film, and the alleged summit that it documents, suffers from all the bad things to which supergroups are prone. These guys may be famous, but they’ve got absolutely no chemistry! The jams noodle and peter out just as much as the lame ones that you and your buddies attempt. Our protagonists are the painters, the sonic designers in their respective bands, but it turns out that with this kind of music you need the conceptual front man types to make the music interesting. The Weight? As for the point of the thing—actually, beyond revenue, there is no point. The film cuts back and forth between these three guys, presenting (reasonably or even extremely interesting) biographical tidbits, suggesting that we’re leading to some kind of conclusion or collision or culmination. At the end—the sound of crickets. Nothing. Meaningless. Mind you, there is an instant during the bonus features in which Page uncorks that descending figure from Kashmir. Stunning! Music is in the moments.
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
May I state that when he’s starting out he oversings like crazy? Still, it’s very clear that this is a remarkably talented boy. More, better, he appears to be a remarkably nice one, too. It’s not for sure though, since this production is so calculated and manufactured and processed that it’s almost painful. The traditional documentary person finds himself in the midst of an interesting dilemma. Is this just a cynical/oblivious promotion, a mere unattributed bit of manufacturing? Or is something bigger and more dire going on?
Everyone knows: technology is past ubiquitous, and social media, together with the various devices that render it, seems to be changing the very nature of human development. Narcissism used to be a way station on the way to emotional and moral maturity. If some people never quite left it then there was still the understanding that they should, and still could. But now people take pictures of themselves and talk about themselves and exhibit themselves unto eternity, or else they despise themselves while obsessing over the manufactured image of some distant desired object. In other words, this movie.
It's not like any of that is exactly new, but the volume and concentration are altogether new to the point of being incalculable. As for good old, honest, hard-headed documentary, it might just be at a crossroads, or even at the end of the road. Have the old rules or warnings—avoiding the camera game, or incorporating the apparatus in order to properly contextualize tainted behavior—simply disappeared? That violin girl bit is cool to the point of being lovely, but you have the strong feeling that you can’t trust these guys. (Some of that ticket granting, ticket upgrade footage is quite touching—people are so ardent and vulnerable! But it's more of the same thing, more of the same problem. The Bieber camp is somewhat kind in the midst of its incredible self-serving.) Also, is anyone else suspicious of this transparently self-serving manager, who produced the film and made himself the secret hero thereof?
Total Balalaika Show
This is not a film, really. The event is captured. It’s pretty fun. The Russians (The Red Army Choir and Ballet) are very good, and very good sports, too. They don’t appear to be confused classical types, and the Finns don’t appear to be making fun of them. So that’s good.
The rock guys, The Leningrad Cowboys, are actually quite capable, at least musically. But there’s really not much going on here, either theatrically, or in the cinematic presentation/ transformation of the performance. And in the end the band is kind of boring. Their visually defining shoes/hair joke, which is a bit funny, still isn’t that funny. Back to the Russians. Do they tire of endlessly performing these same old over-familiar numbers, all rooted out of their context and history? The songs are definitely okay, as are the performances thereof. And it’s just what the tourists eat up. But isn’t there more to Russia, even to these songs, than this?
Under Great White Northern Lights
Jack White comes off better here than in that terrible triple guitarist movie. It may be the setting. St. John's, Yellowknife (!), town squares and old folks’ homes and such. (The bowling alley stuff comes off as precious, but it’s a good try.) The combination of this primordial geography and the pretty, small-scaled—Canada!—help them root the rock star stuff a little more.
In the face of eternity and community, celebrity takes its proper place. This is a little bit like the NFB’s Royal Journey, actually, with that film’s kind of colonialist, ultimately fetching regality being replaced by these two young Americans, trying to be famous and sort of decent at the same time.
Mind you the film does lose track of its cross-Canada conceit, so that we only get the setting, or the interaction, in a glancing way. The White Stripes are always so noisily front and centre that the peripheries that they were trying to get to stay peripheral. Not such a sin, probably; youth, and the filmmakers need to sell the film. Plus, the band is interesting, and comes off pretty well. Jack is always singing at the breaking point, where chest and head voices come into conflict. It makes for a ragged, vivid, vulnerable sound. And that Meg! Still waters? Earth mother? A cipher? Maybe she’s a plain gal who got caught up in something, and tried to do her best. Pretty cool drumming, really.
We also get some really clear, kind of uncomfortable illustrations of how the presence of the camera complicates and maybe invalidates things. We will now film Meg trying to take a nap. We will make Jack try to attend to his ex-wife (lots lying between those lines!), and to their various hosts, to the locals, and the camera crew, and the implied or anticipated or perceived audience, all at the same time! It’s the camera game, like crazy. The last sequence, in which Jack sits at the piano and plays, and Meg sits at the piano and cries, is actually kind of obscene. You can’t pretend that this is mere observational cinema. Jean Rouch had it right—either step up, establish what’s happening, interact and minister, or turn the damned camera off.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
That is a funny title. This is also a real cut above the usual rock doc. One reason is that the subject is fresh, and the film is entertaining. These guys are obscure, and kind of ridiculous, and there are laughs a-plenty. Another reason is that the over-familiar behind-the-music exposition and trajectory is mostly replaced by observational and interactive techniques. We get the chronology and the outlandish photos, but the band isn’t just treated like a cliché, or a platitude, or a product of the star-off machine. This is an actual documentary, a record of a reality and a process and lots of other things besides. More importantly, there are glimpses, of diversities and the immigrant experience, of how musicians are really just trying to make a living, of a lot of substantial, quietly Canadian things.
Finally, most importantly of all, this film is brim-full of charity and decency, both in the relations between its subjects and in the way the filmmakers regard those subjects. Critics may laugh about the way these guys argue. They might attend more to the way they make up. Lips is a goofball, but he’s also a sweet-natured soul, an Israelite (Ontario Jew, anyway) without guile. The part where his loving sister lovingly hands over that money is tremendously moving. Isn’t this how we should treat and love our sinners? And who are we to judge, anyway? The sinning is irrelevant, disappearing as it does beneath all of this Chekhovian mercy. Here’s what God thinks of heavy metal, and heavy metal musicians.
