A few days ago I got two films out from the Filmshop. Sympathy For The Devil (incl. the directors version One Plus One) and The Devil and Daniel Johnston. I watched the documentary about the songwriter and musician Daniel Johnson first. I had never heard any of his music before and this film showed his progression as a musician and the decay of his mental health. It was a really interesting story, his music is fantastic and he was quite a character (he is still alive but heavily medicated so isn't the live-wire he once was). There was great archive footage and audio recordings, not just of his music but recorded diary entries and conversations, but I felt the film relied too heavily on talking-head interviews, mainly revering his talents, though his parents showed obvious distress talking about looking after a son with a Bipolar disorder. However, it's a warm portrait, obviously made by someone who loves and respects him and it's turned me on to the cult of Daniel Johnston (see fantastic clip below). Sympathy for the Devil had the opposite effect and turned me off what I one thought of as a to-be-revered film maker, Godard. I don't want to see anything by him again (well, maybe just Alphaville and Une Femme Est Une Femme). I really disliked this film. I thought it was a documentary about the Rolling Stones recording the track Sympathy for the Devil. It has nothing to do with them, they seem merely a backdrop for Godard's political views. I found it tedious and arrogant and fast-forwarded many of the political vignettes interspersing the slow pans of the Stones in the recording studio. I didn't make it to the end of this film but strangely what I did see has stayed with me.
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