“Hey Hey Mama, said the way you move gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove.”
From the director of Inconvenient Truth comes another documentary about saving the world. Filling in for Al Gore are Jack White, Jimmy Page, and The Edge—ambassadors of how cool and joyful music can be. I could stretch the rock metaphor of saving the world even further, but this documentary is simpler and better than that. It’s simply the story of three guitarists telling their life stories and getting together to jam.
The film progresses chronologically, moving from humble childhoods in economically depressed cities to playing crappy nightclubs in shitty towns to becoming the rock icons of today. Interspersed between these sections are scenes of the three guitarists getting together to talk and play. At times the differences in generation and personality show through in awkward conversations, but once the guitars get passed around, all becomes natural and the mutual enjoyment and respect feels palpable. In fact, part of the film’s charm rests in the vicarious feeling that you are sitting right there with them, shooting the breeze and playing effortlessly—even if, like me, you have no clue how to strum, let alone shred, a guitar.
The feeling of rubbing elbows with the Edge and company testifies to the documentary’s accomplishment of making these legends accessible. How could they not become humanized after the film re-visits early U2 as a really bad 80s bad, pictures of a teenage Jack White working as an upholsterer, and Jimmy Page as a youngster telling an interviewer that he wants to be a bio-researcher? As well as through simple, moving scenes like the ones built around The Edge’s reminiscences in his old school. “If I hadn’t seen the band flyer up here,” he said pointing to a bulletin board on the wall, “I probably would have been a banker or something.” Dialogue like this allows the viewers to draw closer and share in the awe of how lives move in mysterious, unexpected ways, whether that path leads to banker or rock icon.
At times, though, the documentary pushes the viewer away in gratuitous slo-mo long shots of Jack White smoking and Jimmy Page strutting. Shots like those show a manufactured coolness, fun to watch but inauthentic in this documentary. Fortunately, the film never fails quickly to recapture its equilibrium between human characters and rock gods, and the scenes of posturing are soon forgotten amidst the raw, natural talent of these people. Isn’t a guy who plays with enough intensity to bleed all over his guitar cool enough without the slow-mo?
When I said that this documentary was about saving the world, I was only half-kidding. First of all, rock and roll can save the world—common knowledge, no need to explain (see: Black, Jack. School of Rock). Secondly, there seems to be a pressure on documentaries to mean something, be that exposing evil corporations, saving dolphins in Japan, or beginning the war on global warming. All of the documentaries mentioned are important and worth seeing, but sometimes their sense of importance precludes less-serious docs like this one. Thankfully, the creators of It Might Get Loud—in true rock & roll fashion—bunked the establishment in making a documentary about nothing more important, pressing, or world changing than allowing viewers to join three uncommon guitarists in celebrating our common love of music.
Dude, I'm so not down for slow-mo at this point in my life. W. Anderson has ruined it for me I think. Any movie, in the next three years, that is shot hand-held, I will automatically start out at worth seeing. Tight review here, btdub.
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