Capone's Art-House Round-Up with TRACKS, JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE and TAKE ME TO THE RIVER!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


TRACKS
In 1977, Australian Robyn Davidson walked mostly alone for 1,700 miles across the Australian outback, going from the desolate town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. She chronicled her journey shortly thereafter in the pages of National Geographic and expanded that telling into the book “Tracks” in 1980. So why has it taken this long to make a film about her incredibly treacherous expedition? I'm sure there are several reasons (and I know attempts have been made to get this turned into a movie), but chief among them has to be that Davidson began this trip to get away from people, which became increasingly difficult the further along she got, since tourists and locals alike wanted to get a photo of/with the "camel lady" (she traveled with wild camels that she broke and trained to carry her gear).

As a film from director John Curran (THE PAINTED VEIL, STONE, WE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE) and adapted by Marion Nelson, TRACKS is a highly watchable, fascinating and thirst-inducing work that captures a great deal of the meditative, hypnotic and sometimes psychedelic effects of hundreds of days in a row walking some of the hottest terrains in the world. But at its center is a deliberately off-putting performance by Mia Wasikowska (most recently seen in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE and STOKER, but probably—and unfortunately—best known in America for the title role in Tim Burton's ALIVE IN WONDERLAND) as a woman who is sick of talking to other human beings and would rather be left alone with her loyal dog and ornery camels.

The film doesn't attempt to dive too deep into the reasons Davidson grew tired of human contact—and it's actually adorable how chatty she becomes the few times she crosses paths with strangers. We're just asked to accept that sometimes, people want to be alone and they can get snippy when people won't shut up around them. Please feel free to ignore the posters for TRACKS, which show "Girls" star Adam Driver as National Geographic photographer Rick Smoland (the magazine helped finance Robyn's trip in exchange for Smoland showing up along the journey to photograph her) stroking Davidson's cheek, hinting that this film might be a romance. It most certainly is not, even though the two did get intimate for a brief time.

Needless to say, the cinematography by Mandy Walker here is simultaneously bleak and breathtaking. The sense of the heat and dust practically clogs your lungs. And in a generous (but probably not legally necessary) screen credit, the film says that it was inspired by the Smoland's photos, which likely means that certain shots were meant to re-create his stunning work, some of which is shown during the closing credits. As Smoland, Driver is quite different than we've seen in other roles (including last week's THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU); here, he's a professional but also charming, leaning toward quirky, and only someone trying to stay away from people would find him utterly annoying.

One of the more interesting aspect of TRACKS is the look at how racism against the native Aboriginal Australians was still alive and well in the late 1970s. When Robyn must walk through sacred land, she has to get an Aboriginal guide to escort her, and although (or perhaps because) she and her elderly guide don't speak the same language, they become fast friends.

TRACKS is an exhausting experience, and I believe that's the desired effect. Wasikowska is one of the finest actors of her generation (from any country), and presented to us here, raw and exposed and borderline shellshocked, is a bold move and it makes it so much easier to get into Davidson's state of mind at the time. If you think the idea of watching a film about a woman walking through a seemingly endless desert doesn't sound like something you'd be interested, I'm happy to tell you, you're likely wrong, and this film might even change your mind about the power of solitude. It's quite the experience.


JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE
If you've been paying any attention to the progress of this film from writer-director John Ridley (who just won an Oscar for writing the adaptation of 12 YEARS A SLAVE) over the last couple of years, this is in fact the Jimi Hendrix biopic with no Hendrix-written music, which isn't as bad as you might think. By concentrating on just the year of Hendrix's life that he spent building up his reputation in London (1966-67, culminating with his guitar-burning live set at the Monterey Pop Festival), JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE is able to capture Hendrix as a person and character, while only using a handful of performances of cover versions, including a re-creation of the famous performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in front of two of the Beatles the week that album came out.

As much as music is a major force in the film, it isn't necessarily the driving force. Ridley has opted to concentrate primarily on the relationships Hendrix (played by Outkast frontman André Benjamin) had with a couple of important women in his life, especially Linda Keith (Imogen Poots), a would-be talent scout who met Hendrix in New York at a near-empty show playing behind another singer. But she pulls the painfully shy Hendrix out of the background, and the two become something of a power couple when they head back to her native London, where Hendrix begins the slow, awkward process of building up the stage persona for which he eventually became famous. Much to Linda's chagrin, Hendrix also casually floats (as he did most things) with a volatile groupie named Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell), leaving Linda somewhat in the dust.

Benjamin's performance is fairly astonishing, capturing Hendrix's vocal intonations, playing style (obviously, it's not him playing, but his stage moves are dead on). But beyond those things, Benjamin also beautifully captures the mindset of the creative mind, how the ebb and flow of ideas inspires him, and his more surface traits—Hendrix seems drawn to whoever the next pretty girl is that walks into the room, the same way leaves blow in the same direction as the wind. But the best scenes are those between Benjamin and Poots, who have a mature chemistry in the face of the foolishness that surrounds the rock life style. If anyone propped Hendrix up to succeed and be adventurous with this music, it was Linda Keith, and Ridley's telling of this story makes that perfectly clear.

But the big question is, is that story enough to make for an intriguing film, especially without a single classic Hendrix-penned tune in the mix? Just barely, is my answer. In truth, the film has bigger issues than a lack of early Hendrix music. There's an out-of-nowhere sequences involving Hendrix getting physically abusive with Etchington that the real woman says never happened, but more importantly, there's no explanation for the burst of violence or an indication that physical aggression was an issue Hendrix struggled with. There are a couple of strange personality traits that Ridley leaves floating around the ether of JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE, but never really grabs hold of, and it makes the filmgoing experience slightly frustrating.

Still, I think Benjamin does the best with what he's given, and the filmmakers do the best with what they aren't. The idea of a music biopic not having access to original compositions isn't unprecedented (at least one Beatles docudrama—BACKBEAT—did the same thing quite successfully), but, as accurately reproduced as they are, the concert re-creations don't really add much to the film, and only serve to emphasize what's not there. JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE is a close call, but I think the strength of the acting and the narrow focus of the story trumps anything some might feel is missing. In truth, more casual fans might find the film more satisfying than die-hard Hendrix enthusiasts.


TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
I'm something of a nut for music documentaries, whether they are about artists I'm thoroughly familiar with or ones about performers that I know nothing about, I'll watch pretty much anything. I love sweeping documents of musical movements or tales about places (studios, cities, regions of the country/world) where great music has been made. But I'm especially drawn to films about music or musicians I know almost nothing about, because there is nothing greater than being given a crash course on a musician or musical style that has moved at least one person enough to make an entire film about it. I'm certainly not suggesting all such films work. In fact, if the movie hasn't convinced me the subject was worth making a film about in the first place, I react quite negatively (the same is true of any doc, obviously).

Not long after my college years, I discovered the music of Memphis-based Stax Records, home to artists like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Johnnie Taylor, Booker T. & the M.G.s, Rufus Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, and the list literally goes on and on. And the new documentary TAKE ME TO THE RIVER celebrates the artists and songs of Memphis and the Mississippi Delta, primarily through a walk into the Stax catalog (with occasional trips into Hi Records music as well, with artists such as Al Green and Otis Clay).

The film chronicles an attempt by many surviving artists from Stax glory days of the late '60s through the 1970s to re-record many of their great songs with contemporary artists, primarily hip-hop artists (Snoop Dogg, Yo Gotti, HUSTLE & FLOW's Oscar-winning Frayser Boy), but also including rock acts like the North Mississippi Allstars—the band's collaborations with Mavis Staples are the highlights of the film, but even just watching them work through the arrangements is fascinating.

There's an emphasis in the film about older musicians handing down knowledge, not just of the music but also of the times in which the music was created. The fact that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis is certainly not lost on those who live there, and it should come as no surprise that the city turned to Stax musicians to help promote peace when other cities were experiencing riots in the wake of King's death.

There's a clear joy in the faces of elder musicians like Staples, Booker T. Jones, Charlie Musselwhite, Bobby Rush, William Bell, Bobby "Blue" Bland and the many session players is meeting these younger artists who sing their praises and talk about growing up in households where a parent or other role model would play Stax music. That being said, the collaborations themselves (many of which we hear from beginning to end) are hit and miss in terms of quality; shockingly enough, "Ain't No Sunshine" doesn't need a rap verse in the middle of it.

Director Martin Shore also devotes (deservingly so) some time to the struggles and ultimate demise of Stax Records and its owner Al Bell, who appears to have been targeted for commercial extinction by larger record labels after refusing to let one of them acquire the label. Narrated by Terrence Howard (who also performs in the film), TAKE ME TO THE RIVER is at its best as a history lesson about a music scene that influenced other performers around the world. I'm not sure and emphasis on the modern versions of these classic tracks is the most fitting tribute to that music, but the film features plenty of the originals to keep our ears locked in and happy.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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