Cameraperson Intrigues, but Often Lacks Context

-->

CAMERAPERSON (2016)

Directed by Kirsten Johnson

Big Mouth Productions, 102 minutes, Not-Rated

* * *

Kirsten Johnson is a documentary filmmaker best known for her work on productions such as Citizenfour (2014), her look at Edward Snowden; Darfur Now (2007); and This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006), a takedown of the politics of Hollywood ratings codes. Her newest project, Trapped, has been making its way across college campuses this spring, as its topic—the backdoor efforts to limit access to abortion services—is a hot-button issue.

Like most documentarians, though, the few things for which Johnson is known are but the iceberg’s tip of her career. Much of the larger body of work has been behind the camera, either for her own small films or as a hired lens crafter for projects directed by others. She has done camera work, for instance, on several Michael Moore films. Cameraperson is a pastiche of her resume, with an intriguing twist. Its major point is to see subjects as if you are the eye of the lens. The approach is both personal and voyeuristic; in essence, it’s both revelatory and sometimes faintly unsettling. The idea intrigues, though sometimes the final product is stronger in conception than in execution.

To say that Johnson’s past oeuvre is catholic in an understatement. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, Johnson’s cameras have probed topics such as military women and rape, genital mutilation in Ghana, midwives in Nigeria, the relationship of humans and thinking animals, gay Jews, the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Mormons, and Chinese medicine. She made films in France, but has spent a lot of time in Africa and in the Balkans. If there are any constant themes in her work, they are: social activism, the roles of women across the globe, the effects of war on women, the dangers of militarism, and power relations. How, exactly, does one summarize such eclecticism?

There is, of course, no imperative that films have a strict narrative structure. Johnson opts for a bathing-in-images approach akin to that of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) or Baraka (1992), except her film eschews quick-cuts and has more dialogue. It’s a sampler approach with culls that stand independently of each other, yet are incomplete in and of themselves. We watch a Nigerian midwife impassively deliver two children, one of which is healthy and the other of which appears unlikely to survive; listen to an old Muslim woman with wrecked teeth and posture tell us of her former beauty and her current optimism; follow Derrida across a street while holding court; notice Michael Moore ambushing an interviewee; and witness war’s devastation in numerous locales. We can only infer how any of these things end.

I’d like to say that all of this works as well as Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka, but that’s not the case. In the former, the image is the story; in Johnson’s films, the story is the story but we must infer it from the images. When it works, it’s spot on, but I often found myself struggling for enough context to understand why Johnson picked a particular slice of film over another. Cameraperson is under two hours in length, yet it feels longer because of the amount of intellectual energy needed to stay engaged. Should you see it? Yes—the virtues are worth it—but be prepared for an uneven journey that could use a tough editor to sort. I’d also say that if individual clips fail to resonate, just let that be the case. There is no grand theme other than seeing things from the POV of the lens, so you’ll be just fine if you tune in and out.  --Rob Weir

Anne Hillerman Has Yet to Catch Tony's Magic

ROCK WITH WINGS (2015)

By Anne Hillerman

Harper, 336 pp.

* *

We all have our literary equivalents of Twinkies—stuff we consume lustily though we know they are chockful of artificial ingredients that are not intellectually healthy. One of mine was Tony Hillerman, whose Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries go down easily and, on occasion, manage to impart fascinations about Navajo culture. Plus, if you’ve spent any time in New Mexico, backdrops start firing in the brain like your own personal slide show.

Tony Hillerman died in 2008, and the franchise went dormant until his daughter Anne revived it in 2013 with Spider’s Daughter. In it, Jim Chee takes a bullet to the brain and nearly dies. He’s still recouping in Rock with Wings; he can’t speak, but his mind is becoming sharper and he has started to use a computer. These books naturally raise the question of whether Ms. Hillerman is a chip off the old block, or an annoying splinter.  So far, she’s somewhere in between. She has her father’s gift for evoking landscape and she’s faithful and consistent with the characters he created: Leaphorn the methodical, deductive sage and Chee more sensitive and intuitive. She also fleshed out Bernadette Manuelito, Chee’s wife and Leaphorn’s former protégé, whose police skills are a composite of the two leads. What’s missing, though, is Tony’s appreciation for mystery and his command of Navajo beliefs. Both of these are waived across Rock with Wings, but neither penetrates deeply. Ms. Hillerman also scores on the  perfunctory end of the plotting scale.

  The book unfolds with a weird encounter—a routine traffic stop in which Manuelito is offered a sizable bribe to overlook it. It becomes more puzzling when all the driver is hauling are boxes of dirt. Bizarrely, there is heat from the FBI for tribal police to butt out and turn matters over to them. Meanwhile, Jim Chee is invited to help a relative get a tour business off the ground and sees it as a good opportunity to divert Bernie’s suspicions and have a delayed mini-honeymoon in the Monument Valley. Of course, things go wrong—Bernie has to return home almost immediately to care for her elderly mother and Chee gets loaned to the Monument Valley tribal police to help deal with problems related to a Hollywood crew filming a zombie movie on Navajo land. Toss in a few violent deaths, some troubled teens, elderly German tourists, endangered plants, faulty technology, a burned car, a solar company, references to John Ford films, passing references to Navajo legends, vintage fancy goods, isolated hogans, and what do you get?  Well… a big mess, really.

It’s the kind of book one might toss aside were it not that we know and like its central characters so well. I didn’t anticipate the book’s resolution, but that has less to do with my deductive powers than with Ms. Hillerman’s deus ex machina way of extracting herself from all the obvious red herrings she threw into the stew pot. I didn’t dislike this book, but I sure was aware that I was consuming Twinkies. Fair enough—no one ever picked up the old man’s books in the mistaken impression that he or she was reading Proust. Still, what I’ve read of Anne Hillerman thus far invokes more guilt than pleasure. I’ll give her one more chance. Warning has been served. --Rob Weir  

Black Mess a Not-so-Good Look at a Tired Genre

-->

BLACK MASS  (2015)

Directed by Scott Cooper

Warner Brothers, 122 minutes, R (language, violence, sexual situations)

 * *

I didn’t like Good Fellas when it came out in 1990. I now recognize Martin Scorsese’s film as a superb one, but the problem back then was that I had Mafia film fatigue. I mention this for two reasons, the first of which is that I’m tired of films (and books) about South Boston, Boston Irish, and Boston mobs. Been there; done that—a million times since Good Will Hunting. The second reason is that even I had been psyched for all of these things, Black Mass still wouldn’t be a very good movie. I simply can’t conceive of rethinking it in the future.

Black Mass is the portrait of a sociopath, James “Whitey” Bulger, who from 1972 through 1994 was the linchpin of Boston’s infamous Winter Hill Gang. If you can imagine an act of murder, extortion, racketeering, or low-life behavior, the actions of Bulger and his associates could trump you. (Bet you hadn’t considered adding gun-running for the IRA to your imaginary list of nefarious deeds.) Bulger is brilliantly portrayed by Johnny Depp. His is a chilling look at a man so amoral that he could strangle his partner’s step-daughter without an ounce of regret or emotion. How did he get away with his reign of mayhem? One of the film’s few insights is to cast severe doubt on the old adage: “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.” In many ways, Bulger was the psychotic stepchild of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—a recruit of South Boston neighbor/agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), who hitched his rising star (and ego) to eliminating the Italian Mafia from Boston’s North End through information provided by Bulger. (Connolly, now in prison, actually proved Machiavelli’s assertion about absolute power.)

This is one of many places where Black Mass misses a cue. Rather than explore something meaty, such as Boston's ethnic tension or corruption within the FBI and Massachusetts State government, director Scott Cooper opts for a dip-into-the-decades look at Bulger, an episodic approach that makes sense only to those who already know the details. For everyone else, the script (Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth) for Black Mass becomes Black Mess. We watch as Bulger involves himself in (seemingly) random atrocious acts—an approach that ultimately becomes more voyeuristic than horrifying. The supporting cast is strong—Dakota Johnson as Lindsey Cyr, Bulger’s common-law wife; Kevin Bacon as FBI agent Charles McGuire, who doubts Connolly’s integrity; Jesse Plemons as dim-witted mob muscle Kevin Weeks; Julianne Nicholson as Connolly’s wife Marianne; Juno Temple as doomed step-daughter Deborah Hussey—but their roles are mostly cameos and/or window-dressing. The only substantive roles other than Depp’s are those of Rory Cochrane as Steven “The Rifleman” Flemmi, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Billy Bulger, Whitey’s brother and a mainstay of Massachusetts government—first as Senate president and then as head of the University of Massachusetts. Billy was allegedly the family member who went straight—not so, as it turned out to the surprise of no one in the Commonwealth.

Those who followed the sordid Bulger saga will recognize Black Mass as a sort of greatest infamous hits parade. Not even Depp can add oomph to the limp screenplay. Put another way, coverage in the Boston Globe was far livelier than anything Mallouk and Butterworth wrote. (A personal favorite was the Globe’s retelling of Flemmi’s state’s evidence testimony. When asked to describe his relationship with Bulger, Flemmi replied, “Strictly criminal.” Love it! And thanks to Mr. Flemmi for disabusing those eleven Massachusetts residents who thought he and Whitey were ballet partners.) 

In short, director Scott Cooper gives us little more than a paint-by-the-numbers mob picture. You know the formula: Show how a troubled man lost his remaining morals—the death of his son and his mom if you believe the script. Add opportunity, money; splatter with blood. Drop “F” bombs like a one-armed juggler with Indian clubs. Zoom in on the vacant eyes of a killer. Portray law enforcement as inept and corrupt. (Okay, that one adds a whiff of verisimilitude.) Repeat to fill the requisite two hours. The biggest crime committed in this film was wasting Depp’s astonishing performance. You can safely delete this one from your Netflix queue. –Rob Weir

National Lampoon Documentary Captures Its Perverse Pleasures

-->

DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF NATIONAL LAMPOOM (2015)

Directed by Douglas Tirola

4^th Row Films/Magnolia Pictures, 98 minutes, R (nudity, drugs, language)

* * * *

Welcome to a rarity: a National Lampoon product that bombed. This documentary on the inner workings of the Lampoon empire raked in less than $65k at the box office, a flop on par with the magazine’s disastrous 1978 TV venture Disco Beavers in Outer Space. You should not mistake the two—the film is hysterical and superbly crafted.

It must be said that, like Lampoon editors and writers, I am dismissive of the squeamish PC crowd that cries, “That’s not funny; it’s mean.” If it’s not transgressive, it’s not comedy—there is always a butt, or there is no joke. Sometimes we try to hide comedy’s ‘meanness’ by universalizing, generalizing, or personalizing, but this is subterfuge, not substance. The brilliance of National Lampoon was that it never played nice. Hand writers such as Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue, or Tony Hendra a sacred cow and they’d give you back bestiality, religion, and poop jokes—probably with a blood-covered, bare-breasted butcher serving beef barbecue to unsuspecting Hindus. Looking for boundaries? Don’t. Like Lenny Bruce a generation before, the Lampoon staff told black jokes to call attention to racism, used hate speech to stick issues in your face, and pretty much made fun of every oppressed group you can imagine: gays, disabled, Jews, Latinos, the mentally challenged (Remember Stork from Animal House?)….  Was it “mean” to pick on such targets, or was it a reminder that these folks were amidst us? No one—and I mean no one—took it on the chin as badly as the Establishment; National Lampoon was a raised middle finger to those who yearned for propriety and decorum.

Does this make you uncomfortable? Get over yourself. As Doug Triola’s amazing film reminds, National Lampoon redefined American comedy—even visually. Think of iconic images such as Rick Meyerowitz’s Mona Gorilla cover, or Ed Bluestone’s high concept cover with a gun, a distressed pooch, and the tag line, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll shoot this dog.” What is more standard in American comedy than the parody of mass culture? NatLamp perfected that form; in fact, it morphed from the Harvard Lampoon to a national mag in 1970 when it was—get this!—asked by Cosmopolitan to do a send-up of that publication. For five insane years, National Lampoon was the world’s best-selling humor magazine, and it was fueled by sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The crew that gathered around magazine heads Kenney, Beard, and Rob Hoffman were as transgressive as their material in those early days, yet the suits lined up to throw money at them, which is the ultimate irony of Lampoon: every criticism aimed at it is an indirect slam against advanced capitalism. The magazine lasted until 1998, but it became (and still is) a marketing juggernaut. In addition to the monthly, NatLamp spawned 14 books, 4 theater productions, 12 comedy albums, 30 anthologies, 7 tie-in films (including the entire Vacation oeuvre), and myriad imitators. It also produced two enormously popular radio shows that anticipated satellite radio, and cranked out writers that created, among others: Caddyshack, The Simpsons, Ghostbusters, Second City TV, and Saturday Night Live. Especially SNL, which poached O’Donoghue and Anne Beatts from NatLamp and then signed a cast that producer Matt Simmons neglected to put on retainer: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, and the brilliant John Belushi. The footage of Belushi alone makes this doc must-see viewing! And let’s round out Lampoon’s influence with a short list of those whose careers it helped launch: all of the aforementioned plus Judd Aptow, Kevin Bacon, John Candy, Beverly D’Angelo, John Goodman, Christopher Guest, Tim Matheson, Billy Bob Thornton, and directors John Hughes and John Landis.

That Tirola can sum such a complex story in an hour and a half is its own testimony to the film’s quality, but also check out the superb editing of Joseph Hrings and G. Jesse Martinez. The cuts between still images is amazing and they take place to a rock soundtrack. I couldn’t help but think that Ken Burns and the producers of MTV ought to apprentice themselves to Hrings and Martinez to learn how you can make stills leap off the screen.

Can we be critical of this film? Sure. I can’t fathom why the saccharine Ivan Reitman is on camera so much. More substantively, although Tirola never portrays his subjects as saints and highlights their pettiness as well as their intellect, there are three glaring things he soft peddles: drugs, politics, and sexism. There is a tendency to view the first as a sort of extended college party scene, which is true to a point, but drugs probably played a role in Doug Kenney’s death in 1980 (and may have exacerbated clinical depression) and they certainly killed Belushi two years later. Re: politics, we know that writer/editor P. J. O’Rourke is (very) conservative, which is never mentioned. Maybe that’s fine, but one can’t help but ponder the heartfelt views of those who supped at anti-authority tables. Moreover, the under representation of clothed women at NatLamp suggests a young boys’ network not willing to confront its own gender privilege. Call these reviewer observations, though. This is a truly magnificent documentary. It might make you cringe, but if it doesn’t make you laugh, you simply don’t get comedy.

–Rob Weir   

The Ragbirds Score Big with New Release

-->

THE RAGBIRDS

The Threshold and the Hearth

Rock Ridge Music

* * * *

It’s hardly late-breaking news that musical genres are collapsing at the speed of a North Korean housing development. It’s musical succotash these days, though far too many musicians mash things simply because they can, and in ways as aurally bland as lima beans and canned corn. Thank goodness there are bands like The Ragbirds that add tasty ingredients. This Ann Arbor-based quintet is an indie pop/folk rock/world music hybrid and its fifth album, The Threshold and the Hearth, is its best yet.

Evocations of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel spring to mind, though its anchor is the dulcet-toned Erin Zindle, who wields fiddles, mandolins, and accordions to provide fiery contrast to her calming voice. The Ragbirds are unusual in that they are percussion heavy. Erin’s brother, T. J. Zindle, provides acoustic and electric guitar but her husband, Randall Moore, lays down doumbek, tabla, and other percussion; Jon Brown adds a conventional drum kit, and Dan Jones is on bass—whenever he too isn’t playing some sort of drum. Songs such as “Cosmos,” “The Bottomless Heart,” and “TheCurse of Finger Pointing” have definite West African influences—both in their sunny, exuberant feel and in Zindle’s fingerstyling. (Many West African rhythms now played on guitar are derived from the kora.)

Optimism reigns on this album, no matter what musical traditions The Ragbirds mine. And they mine many. The aforementioned “Cosmos,” for example, also sports some Zindle fiddle work that is both jazzy and quasi-Celtic. She switches to the squeeze box for “Good Time to be Born,” in which her goes-down-easy voice moves us from bleakness—“There’s a stranger with a cart full of useless stuff”—to universal themes of shared humanity: “My own shopping cart is full of compromise/There is always peace, there is always war/But beauty’s always being born.” Considered arrangement of material also keeps us on our toes and in touch with our better angels. Check out the way the last eight tracks roll. In “Sometimes Honestly,” Zindle admits that constant honesty is its own burden and intones, “Luck is just a choice you make.” This is followed by the harder edged “Alleyway Saints” in which T.J.’s electric guitar is fluid but edgy; then it’s introspective piano for “Strange Weather,” Erin’s slow, personal exploration of how a couple negotiates everyday life, with changeable weather the central metaphor. “Tough Love” is a natural follow up with its splashes of energetic mando, its clipped pacing, and a soulful chorus.

That emotional/musical pattern is followed again for the next four songs, my favorites of which were “We Carry This Place,” which felt like a contemplative update of themes Joni Mitchell explored in “Circle Game;” and “Little Ties,” which is folky, vaguely Appalachian, has a sing-along feel, and a fiddle part that’s what you’d get if you put some hand jive to strings. Most of the album’s songs are about renewal and I felt refreshed from listening. They call themselves The Ragbirds, but there’s nothing shabby about them. –Rob Weir

A Man Called Ove a Brilliant Debut

-->

A MAN CALLED OVE  (2014/15)

By Fredrik Backman

Washington Square Press, 368 pp.

* * * * *

Is there a more clichéd line in the history of reviewing than: “I laughed, I cried?” I don’t care how hackneyed it sounds; my experience of reading A Man Called Ove was exactly that. It would be woefully inadequate to say I liked this book; I LOVED this book.

Swedish blogger Fredrik Backman’s debut novel introduces us to Ove, the greatest crank/eccentric since Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. Ove is a brooding man of few words, until it comes to the principles that are at the core of his being. He’s out place in a world of computers, but he has opinions about them. You certainly don’t want to get him started on what he thinks of the kind of person who doesn’t know how to bleed a radiator, hang a proper hook, fix a bicycle, back up a van, or—horror of horrors—would drive a Volvo instead of a Saab. Things that have no purpose have no place in Ove’s world and he’s had it up to his eyeteeth in the “stupidity” that assaults him daily. And there is the special contempt he holds for the “white shirts,” their petty regulations, their impracticality, their big schemes, their haughty demeanor, and their amoral ways. If you have to ask Ove if he’s honest, you’re exactly the sort of person with whom it’s a waste of time to converse.

We meet Ove as he’s on his daily and highly regimented rounds around the neighborhood. He’s 59 and has recently been forcibly retired by a group of white shirts who think they’ve acted in his best interest. Harrumph! As if they’d know what a man like Ove needs! I found myself bursting into laughter at Ove’s ever-growing list of what’s wrong with the world that he assembles from his morning perambulations. If a bicycle chained to a sign sets him off, imagine what happens when someone takes a vehicle into an unauthorized area. In Backman’s lithe prose, we can easily conjure neck veins on the verge of bursting. Ove ponders the question of who needs to be part of such an idiotic world and concludes that he certainly doesn’t.

Backman chooses an unusual comedy of errors setup for his novel. Each time Ove vows that today will be his last, some “annoyance” occurs that interrupts his suicide plans. Among them: a man named Patrik (“the lanky one”) who backs over the non-flowers in Ove’s non-flower bed; Patrik's pregnant wife Parvaneh, an Iranian immigrant who already has two bothersome young daughters; a heavyset neighbor named Jimmy; a teenager who wants to fix a bike; an outlaw mailman named Adrian; a man who falls on the railway tracks; a nosy reporter; a dementia-suffering neighbor named Rune who is both Ove’s best friend and someone to whom he sometimes didn’t speak for years; and a mangy half-frozen moggy Ove calls Cat Annoyance.

Ove’s rants are first-rate comedy, but I reserve my own outburst for “idiots” (an Ove word) who’ve reviewed this book and said they didn’t like it because Ove was “unlikable.” What stupidity! (Another Ove word.) About the time you think Ove is like Ignatius J. Reilly; that is, a mildly demented misanthrope, small parts of his life are slowly unspooled and these will tear out your heart and stomp it into the Swedish snows. There’s a moment in the book where Ove breaks character to punch a man who has blamed Ove for his own misdeeds. It’s against his principles to fight, but Ove reasons, “A time like this comes for all men, when they choose what sort of man they want to be.” That line is, in many ways, the theme of the book and you should not assume that Ove is that man. What if he had become the man he wanted to be, but that life was taken from him? How would you cope if the things that gave your life “purpose” (yes—another Ove word), joy, and sense were wrenched from you? We glibly use phrases such as “time to move on,” but do we ask, “Why?” Or “How?”

This book is sometimes compared to another small gem, The Unlikely Voyage of Harold Fry, which is apt in sentiment, though A Man Named Ove is much funnier. Read it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.  Rob Weir 

Little Girl Blue a Balanced Portrait of Janis Joplin

-->

JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE (2015)

Written and directed by Amy Berg

FilmRise, 105 minutes, Not-Rated (nudity, drug use, language)

* * * *

Depending upon where you live, your local PBS affiliate will or will not be airing this Janis Joplin bio-doc. Joplin has been dead for 45 years, but she's on the fringe of so many sex, drugs, and rock and roll-fueled culture war issues that she's still such a hot-button topic that not every public television station is willing to take the heat. Don't look for a Hollywood treatment any time soon, as two planned Joplin films have suffered epic delays. Amy Berg's documentary is your best bet for a while and is, by far, the best treatment to date of the mercurial Ms. Joplin. Rent it if it isn't aired.

If you wonder why Joplin continues to generate such passion, Berg's film offers some clues. Janis Joplin (1943-1970) was never the poster girl for anyone, and she confounds more expectations than she realizes. Most people know the story of Joplin's troubled ugly duckling childhood and her 1962 middle-finger-raised flight from Port Arthur, Texas and its racist, sexist jerks. Except that's only part of the story. She remained devoted to her family and wrote frequent letters home, often filled with regret for whatever disappointments she may have caused. As the conventional narrative goes, she landed in San Francisco, fell in with the counterculture, and developed the booze-and-drug habit that eventually killed her. Convenient story, but Joplin was a user in the early 60s before she left Texas. And, as it turns out, she loved the counterculture lifestyle, but saw it as more of a means to a very non-countercultural end: material and commercial success. In fact, Joplin was never a very good spokesperson for anything other than her music. She had scores of lovers, a short list including: Peter de Blanc, Peggy Caserta, Dick Cavett, Eric Clapton, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Ian, Kris Kristofferson, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Joe Namath, and Jae Whitaker. Berg's film has been criticized by the left for doing a drive-by on Joplin's bisexuality, and by the right for glossing her promiscuity. Actually, Berg gives it exactly the right touch; Joplin simply indulged her desires of the moment and was neither an advocate of LGBTQ rights nor for the sexual revolution. Like most things in her life, sex was highly personal. The one exception was that Joplin had no time for racists—a good reason to get the hell out of Texas back then. Her unique sound was built upon a foundation of Billie Holliday, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton; she never hid her profound admiration for Otis Redding and she aspired to be like Aretha Franklin.

Berg's film telescopes Joplin's early days, takes us to her breakout moment at Monterrey Pop in 1967, and lets us experience her time on top, but she doesn't sugarcoat her use of meth, booze, and heroin. What we get instead is the portrait of an artist only truly herself when on stage and wracked by guilt, doubt, loneliness, and ennui when not performing. We hear from former bandmates in Big Brother and the Holding Company (1966-1968) and the Kozmic Blues Band (1969-70), and intimates such as Cavett, Kristofferson, Whittaker, Bob Weir, filmmaker D. A. Pennebacker, and surviving family members. Beck also draws upon rich archival and concert footage, including harrowing clips from Woodstock that presage her demise. The overarching portrait that emerges is one of pride for her success, but deep insecurity.

The film's arc and vibe are very reminiscent of Amy, the Amy Winehouse bio that many readers will recall I disliked. What's different? First of all, Joplin appears as both architect and victim of her fate, not merely a tragic figure. Second, Berg isn't afraid to show Joplin at both the apex and the nadir of her craft. I'll elaborate below, but Berg's film casts doubt on Joplin's place in the musical pantheon. Third, she does a far better job of placing Joplin within the context of her time and culture. Finally, Berg's Joplin is simply a more complex person than was Ms. Winehouse, which provides material for a richer script. Asif Kapadia's Amy is slicker and has prettier surfaces, but Berg's film has more depth. 

#janisjoplin

Rob Weir

Postscript: Joplin's Place in Rock History

Like many Baby Boomers, I was gob smacked by Joplin when I first heard her. Is there a "greatest" list anywhere that does not list her at or near the top of the heap? Rolling Stone lists her as the 28^th best vocalist of all time (Aretha Franklin is #1) and the 48^th greatest performer. That's as low as any rating I've seen. Billboard ranks her # 5 and Popcorn # 1.

Amy Berg's film made me wonder if we need to rethink how highly Joplin is regarded. There is, after all, a world of difference of being able to sing and knowing how to sing. It was only toward the very end of Joplin's life that she seemed to grasp that difference; before then she often used shouts and screams to mask the fact that she was improvising on the spot because she didn't really know where she wanted to take her songs. (Check out her incredibly sensitive take of "Me and Bobbie McGee" as she first sang it on a train full of musicians hurtling across Western Canada—a moment of insight rather than raw power.)

All rankings systems are arbitrary, subjective, and highly debatable. Janis, like Aretha, had a voice only Mother Nature could have created, but I'd reverse the Rolling Stone formula and rate her among the greatest performers of all time. But would I say she was a better singer than some of those the magazine ranked below her–Mavis Staples, Grace Slick, Gladys Knight, Patsy Cline, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell? Nope. Add names such as Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith, Bjork, and Christina Aguilera, and you see the problem. Berg's subtitle, Little Girl Blue infers her assertion that Janis was "Queen of the Blues." Ummm…. "no" on that as well. (Koko Taylor? Dinah Washington? And Bessie Smith will always be the "Empress" of the blues.)

I don't mean to infer that Joplin doesn't deserve to be exalted as among the great, but all performed music is a combination of talent, formula, and hype. Joplin had so much chutzpah that sometimes she blinded us to the fact that a lot of what she was doing was as gaudy and overdone as the brightly colored boas in her hair.  But there's not a thing wrong with being considered among the greats!