The Scottosphere

It Might Get Loud
Coolidge Cor­ner The­atre
8 Sep­tem­ber 2009

The premise: Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White come together to dis­cuss gui­tars, their sig­na­ture sounds, song­writ­ing, and the cre­ative process. Will it pro­vide deep tech­ni­cal insight into the gui­tar mas­tery of these leg­ends or will it, as White glibly pre­dicts, sim­ply end in a fist­fight? Nei­ther, as Davis Guggenheim’s newest doc­u­men­tary turns out, but the film is a truly enjoy­able, some­times edu­ca­tional, and sat­is­fy­ingly tune­ful jour­ney nonetheless.

The three char­ac­ters are fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple. Page and White, in par­tic­u­lar, impress with the sur­pris­ing depth and breadth of their musi­cal tastes. Watch­ing their eyes as they lis­ten to their favorite songs is telling. White earns bonus points in the Scot­tos­phere for using equip­ment that looks like it came entirely from Michi­gan yard sales. Page earns smiles from the whole the­atre when he breaks out into air gui­tar in his liv­ing room. There is a lovely coun­ter­point between the artists’ musi­cal styles: new and stock footage of Page’s fancy Zep­pelin fin­ger­work is cap­ti­vat­ing. But then a smil­ing Edge demon­strates how sim­ple his leg­endary gui­tar riffs are by switch­ing out his mas­sive effects sys­tem, reveal­ing just a hand­ful of repeated notes. Jack White denounces over-reliance on tech­nol­ogy by con­struct­ing and play­ing a one-string elec­tric gui­tar out of trash, wire, nails and ham­mer. Then the three learn from each other and jam together.

The mediocre dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion at The Coolidge drove me crazy for the first few min­utes, but (unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally) the movie soon drew me in to the point where I for­got about it. Guggen­heim capa­bly weaves loca­tion shots, inter­views, archival footage, con­cert films, and dozens of toe-tapping songs into the story of the meet­ing. This movie is imper­fect, but watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to these guys is hyp­notic. See it!

Objec­ti­fied
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
21 May 2009

What is indus­trial design? How do inan­i­mate objects invoke emo­tional responses? What makes good design? Do we really need more things? What about the environment?

In inter­views with a star-studded cast of design­ers (includ­ing the leg­endary Dieter Rams and the elu­sive Jonathan Ive), this film attempts to address those ques­tions. Does it have a clear mes­sage? Not so much. In the post-screening Q&A ses­sion at the Boston pre­miere, direc­tor Gary Hus­twit acknowl­edged that his goal was to raise as many ques­tions as he answers—this is a film for think­ing peo­ple. As with his pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­tary, Hel­vetica, the propul­sive force of Objec­ti­fied is the pas­sion of the design­ers. This energy, woven together with superbly shot B-roll footage and a pleas­antly unusual elec­tronic and indie rock sound­track, makes a remark­able and enjoy­able film.

Hus­twit was com­pletely at ease on stage. His answers to ques­tions were witty and well-considered, but I most appre­ci­ated learn­ing the secret of his inter­view tech­nique: his enthu­si­asm for the sub­ject closely matches that of his inter­vie­wees. I can’t wait for the unveil­ing of the still-secret third film of his “design tril­ogy.” Until then: go watch Objec­ti­fied!

You prob­a­bly know the tale by now: on a gray August morn­ing in 1974, a 24-year-old French street per­former non­cha­lantly cris-crossed the space between the twin tow­ers of New York’s World Trade Cen­ter on a high wire nearly 1400 feet above the ground. But why? And how? Man On Wire (now play­ing at the Kendall Square Cin­ema) tells the rest of the story.

For this film, direc­tor James Marsh assem­bles inter­views, stock footage, recre­ations, old home movies, and still pho­tographs into a delight­fully non­lin­ear nar­ra­tive. Philippe Petit’s per­sonal rec­ol­lec­tions are cap­ti­vat­ing. The music is haunt­ing and the visu­als are, at times, stun­ning. But I was com­pletely blown away by some­thing unex­pected: that a doc­u­men­tary could stir so many emotions.

A mot­ley ensem­ble of char­ac­ters was nec­es­sary to obtain roof access, deliver the equip­ment, deploy the lines, ten­sion the cable, and rig the sta­bi­liz­ers while evad­ing detec­tion by the author­i­ties. Lis­ten­ing to their tales of inno­va­tions, suc­cesses, and close brushes with dis­as­ter teased so many mem­o­ries of hack­ing at MIT. But, for all the tech­ni­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion we enjoyed in school, I real­ized that our achieve­ments were so insignif­i­cant in the shadow of Petit’s work. He was seek­ing to do some­thing beau­ti­ful for beauty’s sake. Why walk between the tow­ers? Because they were there. The Port Author­ity police sergeant who arrested Petit describes, in file footage of a news con­fer­ence, what hap­pened. And in the course of his expla­na­tion, he does some­thing remarkable—he steps out of the shell of his police offi­cer per­sona and tells us, with some bewil­der­ment still in his eyes, how grate­ful he was to unwit­tingly become a part of the story.

See this movie at once.