Inside Llewyn Davis (***1/2)

The Greenwich Village folk music in the early 1960s scene serves as the backdrop for this Coen Brothers movie. In some ways, it functions as a citified quasi-sequel to O Brother Where Art Thou, the musical travelgogue that was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. We follow Llewyn Davis on his own odyssey (a certain character name, revealed late in the movie, seems also to allude to Homer). As played by Oscar Isaac, Davis is a none-too-successful singer-songwriter whose gentle songs and soulful eyes are at odds with a somewhat prickly personality. Asked to play something at a dinner party held by university professor and his wife (they like having a bohemian friend), he protests, “I’m not a fucking trained monkey.”

 

Davis can’t help saying what he thinks, even when he can’t afford to. Some people will not want to follow him around for two hours, either, but it’s such idiosyncrasies that make him interesting. Alongside that, the film provides a look into the folk subculture just before folks like Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary became breakout stars. Davis himself would have fit in with Dylan, although he is less acerbic and is said to be based in part on Dave van Ronk, a semi-well known figure called the Mayor of MacDougal Street. Representing the sweeter side of that sound (something like Peter, Paul, and Mary) are a duo called Jean and Jim, played by Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake. Jean also may have been impregnated by Davis. And one of the funniest segments is provided when Davis has a recording session recording a novelty song called “Please Mr. Kennedy.”

This movie didn’t immediately impress me as much as some other Coen Brothers films. It doesn’t have the offbeat humor of Fargo or The Big Lebowski, save for a couple of scenes in which John Goodman plays Davis’s loud-mouthed road-trip companion. It doesn’t have the stark suspense of True Grit or No Country for Old Men. But, a couple of months after seeing this, the character sticks with me. As for the music, most it may be on the austere side for most modern audiences. But it’s well-performed and well chosen by T-Bone Burnett (who served a similar function on O Brother). Isaac, who has sung in his own band, has an excellent voice and gives a breakout performance.

 

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viewed 11/6/13 7:00 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening], posted 12/20/13; review added 1/8/14

Twenty Feet from Stardom (***)

Something like a companion piece to Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the unheralded musicians who backed up 1960s hits by the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Temptations, and other stars, this shines a spotlight on the backup singers of American popular music, mostly the rock and R&B of the 1960s–'80s. With DIY home-recording equipment, Auto-Tune, and cash-strapped record companies, these are tougher times for backups, but some can still make careers of it.

Movies like this can sometimes be on the dull side because they don’t get beyond testimonies to the wonderfulness of their subjects. The first half has some of that, with Bruce Springsteen (who married his back-up singer), Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, and Sheryl Crow (a former back-up singer) among those testifying. Sting does too, but we actually get to see him working in the studio with Lisa Fischer, too. Fischer is one of the stars of the second half of the film, which is built around featurettes about a few of the women, but particularly in terms of their efforts at building solo careers. Among the most successful has been Darlene Love, still singing into her 70s and inducted, as a solo artist, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then there is Merry Clayton, the powerhouse female voice in the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter,” whose solo efforts in the 1970s met with only modest success. There is the relatively young Judith Hill, a songwriter who worries that too many backup gigs will derail her efforts to be seen as a solo artist. And there is Fischer, who had a moment of Grammy-winning stardom in the 1980s but professes to be happier as, most prominently, the Rolling Stones’ favorite backup singer on tour.

The film is not as revelatory as Standing in the Shadows; a couple of the women (and, with a few exceptions, the subjects are women) speak of their discomfort at being seen, on stage, as sex objects more than performers, but not that much behind-the-scenes dirt gets dished. (That Ike Turner saw himself as a pimp and his backup dancers as “hos” hardly counts as dirt at this late date.) Nor is there a ton of technical information about how back-ups are utilized in the recording process. But, for those with an interest in pop music, especially pre-1990 rock, the movie should be entertaining. I was especially taken with old clips of an impossibly young David Bowie, of George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh, and of Ray Charles exuberantly singing on television with the Raylettes, who included Clayton.

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viewed 7/3/13 7:25 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/3/13

Dreamgirls (***1/4)

 ? The Broadway musical based loosely on the story of the Supremes comes to the screen. Beyoncé Knowles takes on the Diana Ross role, the pretty girl singled out by a record company mogul (Jamie Foxx) to lead the “Dreams,” while the ostensible group leader (Jennifer Hudson), the plump Effie, gets pushed to the background despite her powerhouse voice. The overarching theme of the story is the desire for authenticity, which is contrasted with the pressure for commercial success. Foxx’s Curtis Taylor Jr., modeled after Motown founder Berry Gordy, represents the latter.

+ Like Chicago, this made me forget I didn’t like musicals. Hudson is already famous for this, her debut role, and her character is the one who goes through the most changes and whose vocals must carry the greatest emotional weight. Besides Hudson’s Effie, the most compelling character is Eddie Murphy’s, playing a singer whose career is revitalized when he signs with Taylor’s label. Murphy shows none of the mannerisms of his comedy roles and with his singing atones for his big bad hit single “Party All the Time.” The music includes both “period” songs incorporated into the story, the best of which I found to be the ersatz Motown ones from the first half of the film, and the burst-into-song numbers that sound like a soulful take on traditional Broadway show tunes. That all of the music (not the lyrics) was written by Henry Krieger is impressive given this stylistic range.

- Chicago screenwriter Bill Condon has the directing chores here too, and he’s certainly competent, but the film lacks the visual panache that Rob Marshall gave to that musical. Moreover, whereas Chicago was essentially finely polished fluff, Dreamgirls is a movie that’s meant to seem realistic despite being a musical. Given that, I thought that a couple of the characters, especially Effie, seemed to have personality shifts that seemed jarring. The performances and the music definitely fill in some of these gaps, but they’re still there, mostly in the 1960s scenes. And the music snob in me compels the minor complaint that most of the “early 1960s” songs sounded a few years ahead of their time. An admittedly funny scene goes the opposite way: a white group does a bland cover version to prevent the more soulful original from charting. Although this was done often in the 1950s, the practice had declined, and the performance in the movie would have already seemed dated by the time the scene takes place. I’m being picky, but a movie like Ray did just a little better job of portraying the music business.

= ***1/4 The movie contains some dramatic lapses that would be more noticeable in a non-musical, but the performances (musical and dramatic) are on the whole tremendously entertaining, even touching. At over two hours, the movie still goes by quick.

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Shut Up & Sing (***1/4)

? Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (partnering with Cecilia Peck) chronicles country-music superstars the Dixie Chicks as they deal with the fallout from lead singer Natalie Maines’s famously controversial remark. During the run-up to the Iraq war, Maines had told a London audience that they were “ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” The result back home was protests, criticism, lost sales and airplay, and even a death threat. For the group and its publicist and manager, there was confusion about how to handle the negative publicity. Alternating between footage dating from the 2003 tour and from the 2005–2006 period in which the group’s follow-up album was recorded and promoted, the film shows the attempts of the trio, which also includes sisters Marty McGuire and Emily Robison, to move forward in terms of both sound and marketing.

+ The behind-the-scenes footage displays the group’s contradictory impulses toward damage control and anger (combined with wonder) at the firestorm an offhand comment has created. Some of the most revealing scenes only indirectly have to do with the controversy, such as an exchange where their new producer, Rick Rubin, is telling Maines to rewrite the lyrics but keep the melody of a tune she’s not too sure is any good. Using the rock-oriented Rubin, who’d also helped market Johnny Cash to a new audience, is part of a part-forced, part-voluntary attempt to move away from their former core audience. Maines is definitely the most colorful personality and a funny presence.

- I’m not sure I liked the switching back and forth between the 2005 and 2003. I’d have to assume that Kopple didn’t decide to make the documentary the moment the remark was made and had to rely on existing footage for the earlier period. Perhaps the switching helped deemphasize that a documentary ostensibly about a 2003 incident was mostly shot two years later. This isn’t a huge flaw, but I’d have liked to see more about the process by which the band or Maines decided to issue what now seems to be a calculated (and now disavowed) apology for disrespecting the president. There are also very few voices outside of the band. It’s probable that a rock or rap artist would not have generated the same level of rage as a country band, and it would have been useful to delve further into the nature of the country music audience and its definition of patriotism.

= ***1/4 As any documentary about a music group, it helps to be a fan (although there aren’t any complete musical numbers), but this has enough general interest to be worth a look if you were curious about the whole hullabaloo when it occurred. For those looking for a lot of conflict, it’s not here. This is the opposite kind of documentary as Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which focused on a band at war with itself. If this movie is accurate, whatever effect the anti-Bush remark had on the Chicks’ fan base caused no real dissension in the band’s camp.

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