It Might Get Loud

I really like documentaries. I always have actually. And this one was very, very cool. And it's about something I really like, the guitar. I'm no virtuoso, I'm just a dabbler. But I really enjoy playing and this movie made me want to be a better musician. It highlights the playing styles of three really revolutionary guitarists. Jack White from The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, The Edge from U2, and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. Three guys who couldn't be more different. Jack White's style, I think, was summed up in one of his explanations about his playing. He was talking about the kind of guitars that he plays, plastic guitars and really old beat up guitars with bent necks that won't stay in tune. He says, "I like it to be a struggle." I think that's so cool. And you can really hear it in his sound too. Everything sounds like it's taking just a little bit more energy than usual. The Edge is the total opposite. He is a true student of music. The professor of music actually. A carefully calculated technician. His moment most indicative of his playing comes at the beginning of this movie when his guitar tech is talking about his whole big guitar system. It's this giant, super computer that he runs his guitar through and creates these incredibly complex sounds. Everything is very precise. Jimmy Page's sound is about innovation. He always wanted to do things that other people didn't do. Create styles and techniques that no one had ever heard. He's the classic old time innovator.

They're background stories also came across as diverse. White grew up in South Detroit in one of the only white family's in his neighborhood. He grew up surrounded by blues and later hip hop, the former of which is very clearly present in his music. Especially his Raconteur's stuff. He talks about how his mission with The White Stripes was to distract viewers and listeners from the fact that he was playing electric versions of what otherwise would be blues songs. I thought that was really interesting. How he felt like he had to create an aesthetic to mask his true mission. The Edge grew up in Ireland during the height of the turmoil between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. He wrote one of U2's most popular songs, "Sunday Bloody Sunday", out of his own feelings of that turmoil. Page grew up in England and made his start in music as a studio musician recording every different kind of music you can imagine. His desire to innovate with the guitar, he says, came out of his growing distaste for the bland studio work.

The film itself (yup, I'm saying it for this one) is really brilliantly done. It was directed by Davis Guggenheim, of An Inconvenient Truth fame. Guggenheim's directorial work is fantastic in this one. He blends the usage of archival footage from Page's and The Edge's early years with photographs from that time. As well as putting in old live music videos from bands who these three guitarists considered influential, both positively and negatively, in their own playing. But the really masterpiece can be seen in all of Jack White's portions. Every one that he's in, or that focuses on his story, comes off as an art piece. I'm not sure why. Maybe White's character made that easier. Or maybe that's the only way you can show White. It seems like everything Jack White does is some kind of weird, almost esoteric, art. He's the most fascinating musician of the bunch, for sure. At least for me. And maybe that's because I really like all of Jack White's music. Especially his Raconteurs stuff.

I'd recommend this film to anyone who's really into music. And it's accessible to a lot of different generations too, because the 4 decade scope of the artists. I think anyone can watch this film and be thoroughly interested and inspired by one of the stories. This is the best documentary I've seen since Confessions of a Superhero. Take a look at it. It's easy to find. I got it from a Red Box.