Movies

I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night. I didn't know much about the guy going in having only heard a few of his songs, read some of his awful poetry out of a book that G had on the shelves for years, and once overheard a discussion between G and his mother about the fellow years ago. I thought that the guy was just some mediocre lyricist and poet that banged on a piano in a basement somewhere. While I think that turned out to be largely right, I didn't really have any idea as to the depths of his troubles.

This article that G had linked to a while back on the generation gap as it relates to social networking sites and youthful disclosures or exhibitionism on the internet spent a bit of time wondering what it will be like when the current batch of children grow up only to have their entire lives documented on Flickr, YouTube, and their personal blogs. Interestingly, the Daniel Johnston story shows that this sort of full life documentation has already been going on for years. What made the documentary so great was that Johnston has been recording or producing his thoughts and conversations on tape and video along with his music since he was a kid. There's a very complete set of original source material to allow us to watch his evolution, or his slipping away as it may be, over the course of three decades.

There's no doubt that the guy is seriously handicapped by his psychological condition. I think the cries of genius are far too generous. His drawings seem better to me than his music, but a large portion of his drawings seem rather crude (in an unrefined, not offensive, sort of way). From his own mouth his lyrics are little more than stuttering babel, though I do admit that in the right hands some of the songs are quite good. His level of musical and singing ability just can't rise to meet the words even when the words are well crafted.

The movie was extremely well put together and I felt like I got a very good history of how he went from nobody to MTV to the mental hospital and back to the basement of his parents' home. It's an interesting look at mental illness although it spends very little time talking about the illness itself and only focuses on the manifestations.

Bree does a little thing called five word movie reviews. I'd sum this one up as: Crazy guy sings, paints, fades.

Jonathan 3/23/2007 07:06:00 AM