Searching for Sugar Man (***1/4)

I’ve always been impressed by the ability of foreigners to appropriate America’s culture and make it their own. (It happens less the other way around.) We sometimes make a joke of it, as with David Hasselhoff’s popularity in Germany, or Jerry Lewis’s in France. But, on the evidence presented here, and it’s pretty good evidence, Sixto Rodriguez is bigger that Hasselhoff, or Lewis…in South Africa.

That the Detroit native made only two albums in the early 1970s and remained completely unknown everywhere else, including Detroit, makes the story unlikely. Even more unlikely, and impossible in today’s digitally connected world, is that Rodriguez heard nothing of his overseas following. Nor did the South Africans know anything about the man who was a household name there. (At least among the white population. Although Rodriguez is said to have been an inspiration to whites who opposed apartheid, his fan base does not appear to be multiracial.) Fans pored over lyrics for clues about the artist. There were rumors — he was said to have committed suicide before a hostile audience — but that’s all.

So this documentary — by a Swede, Malik Bendjelloul — is a kind of detective story as much as anything else. Bendjelloul also managed to interview the producers of the two albums, who attest to his genius, but that’s not the interesting part. What turns out to have happened to Rodriguez, including his missed opportunity for 1970s stardom, is both unusual and mundane. And the movie itself has provided its own touching ending to the story, with its soundtrack and Rodriguez’s re-released 1970 debut finally granting him the chart placings that eluded him 40 years ago. The music itself, incidentally, fits into the emerging singer-songwriter sensibility of the time, but with generally grittier lyrics and a haunting musical quality somewhat reminiscent of another 1970s artist who has re-emerged, Nick Drake, with some Bob Dylan influences. There’s plenty of it heard in the movie, which cannot explain its enduring qualities nor the vagaries of circumstance and coincidence that can affect what becomes popular.


IMDb link


viewed 10/17/12 7:45 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 10/17/12

Gran Torino (***1/4)

IMDB link

viewed 12/31/08 at Ritz 5

Flash of Genius (***1/2)

This movie’s subject, Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), is barely a footnote in history, but an illustrative one. He is less known as the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper than for the lengthy legal battle he fought to be acknowledged as such.

Kearns, an engineer, is both selfish and completely right in his fight with the Ford Motor Company, which consumes him to the point that it threatens his relationship with his wife (Lauren Graham) and children. That’s the contradiction explored here and what makes it a cut above the typical underdog drama. The screenplay by Philip Railsback does a good job of summarizing the history of Kearns’s invention and his crusade for recognition. A non-lawyer will have some idea of why it can take so long for the wheels of justice to turn. It seems more authentic in this respect than the still-worthwhile North Country, the most similar film I can think of. (That was about sex discrimination.)

There was only one time watching this movie where I said, no, I can’t imagine it happened like that, and that was when Kearns apparently learns his invention was stolen only when he drives down the highway and sees someone using it. About the only other inauthentic thing is the timeline, which the movie slightly fudges, along with Kearns’s age. This is no big deal, but a stronger period feel would have have made the story even richer. Despite the title, the movie is not at all flashy, and so not similar to Tucker: The Man and His Dream, another automobile-related biography, but of a larger-than-life sort of individual. Here, Kearns is a both an everyman character, lately a specialty for Kinnear, and a man of extraordinary persistence. The portrayal is sympathetic, but some people may find him foolishly uncompromising. In any case, they will wonder how far they would go to defend a principle, and be reminded that, no matter what decision they would make, something must be sacrificed, even if it is only time. Thus the movie is bittersweet, and therefore, to me, unexpectedly moving.

IMDB link

viewed 9/11/08 (screening at Ritz East); reviewed