It Might Get Loud or Jim and Jack Play Their Records
I went to see 'It Might Get Loud' Friday night and really enjoyed it. Is it a perfect film? No, its loose structure - the quality that most attracted Page and White to participate in the project in the first place - makes it feel more like notes for a film, than a fully realized film itself. However, sometimes an artist's sketches work better than the final work they study. They're more spontaneous, less studied, more unself-conscious in comparison. 'It Might Get Loud' is a fully realized sketch for a great film. An open-ended, creative film about the creative process itself, about how artist/musicians think, told by the artist/musicians themselves.
In this sense, 'It Might Get Loud' reminds me of another favorite film, Wim Wenders' 'Notebook on Cities and Clothes.' Wender's 'Notebook' is ostensibly a documentary about the fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. And it is, but its so much more. Like 'It Might Get Loud,' 'Notebook' is a film about the process of making a film. Wenders experiments with video cameras and film cameras, visits Paris and Tokyo, tries to understand the context within which Yamamoto works and how it helps to shape his work. Wenders talks to Yamamoto, but also looks at the books and ephemera that the designer collects as clues to what is in his head. He creates a portrait of Yamamoto that is multi-faceted, complex rather than clear, but real, and seemingly different every time the film is watched.
Guggenheim's approach is somewhat different. Each guitarist is followed to the setting of one their most important recordings, or a special place that nurtured their work, and the camera witnesses their casual tinkering and reminiscences. Although, there is a sentimentality - completely lacking in Wender's film - that threatens to interfere with the real work at hand, the filmmaker never wavers from his focus on each guitarist's own struggle to understand how they did what they did. There is a lot of trial and error, a relentless obsession with discovering how to recreate with a guitar the sound they hear hear in their heads. As White fights with the imperfections of each flawed instrument to realize a new but primitive sound, The Edge tinkers with technology to expose sounds that are only produced between machines. Page, the elder statesmen of the three, is the most relaxed and the most virtuoistic, his fingers savoring the nuances of blues notes that he has played for decades. When they come together to play, the resulting music somehow often gels and the pleasure of these combinations is apparent in their smiles and appreciative glances.
My favorite scenes are the ones which capture Jack White and Jimmy Page playing their favorite records. Son House for Jack, Link Wray for Jimmy. The sight of Jimmy Page playing air guitar to Link Wray was worth the price of admission all by itself!
Despite the different subject matter, both filmmakers are experimenting with the documentary form itself. How do you describe, understand and explain something as elusive as the creative process? Many books have been written on creativity and many studies have been undertaken. Ultimately, creativity - the creative process and everthing related to it - is difficult to put into words. And even if it can be articulated, then what do you do with that information?
In Guggenheim's film, three gifted guitarists invite the viewer to witness glimpses of their creative processes. The film doesn't take itself or its subjects too seriously, but you feel intensely their dedication and their struggles.
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