Arguably the most enjoyable music documentaries show rock and roll at its most debauched and/or ridiculous (Cocksucker Blues, Some Kind of Monster, Dig!). So it was a brave (or foolish) move for filmmakers Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara to spend ten years documenting the rather reserved and genteel world of New Yorkers The Magnetic Fields – the finished results of their labours are currently playing on various video on demand services, and in occasional cinema screenings, before getting a full DVD release later this year.
For those not acquainted with the band, The Magnetic Fields are the brainchild of Stephin Merritt, a short, gay, permanently grumpy man notable for his prodigious output (as well as The Magnetic Fields he performs with numerous side projects), his lyrics which combine a healthy amount of misanthropic wit with romanticism, and his desire to explore as many different musical genres as possible (apparently the only two he hasn’t managed to tackle yet are hip-hop and metal). All of these qualities have earned the band a small but ridiculously devoted fanbase (a cursory look through the posts I have made on this site shows that I’m a fan myself), meaning that Fix and O’Hara face the difficult position with their film of including enough information to appeal to people who have never even heard of the band, while not boring the obsessives.
Begun in the wake of the (relative) success that 1999’s triple album 69 Love Songs brought the band, the film charts the recording of their latest three records, the ‘no synth’ trilogy, in particular 2004’s I (an album where every song title starts with the letter I – Merritt is very keen on concepts) and 2008’s Distortion and captures, as you’d expect, the usual studio-based tensions and arguments. As the band’s studio is Merritt’s tastefully cluttered apartment, his personality is stamped all over this, prickly and guarded as it is, although going by his previous form with interviewers Merritt is surprisingly co-operative with Fix and O’Hara, presumably because, as he reveals in the film, he would much rather be involved in movies rather than the music industry.
It’s difficult to say if the film will appeal to newcomers. The filmmaking itself is no great shakes – shot in a matter of fact, self-effacing style on fairly low grade digital cameras its not an especially good looking film, and other than an opening dalliance with stop-motion animation, Fix and O’Hara don’t try to mess with the standard formula of fly on the wall footage mixed with talking heads. That being said, their anonymous style does mean that they capture a lot of footage that clearly shows the band’s strengths – other than the transcribing of one of their finest lyrics in the opening animation, there’s plenty of footage of the bands sonic experiments and of the wittily bitchy banter that goes back and forth between Merritt and his co-vocalist/drummer/pianist/manager (not to mention longtime friend/mother figure/fag hag) Claudia Gonson during their live shows. For those same reasons, longtime fans of the band will find a lot to enjoy here. The film may not have much in the way of revelations, but it does make up for it by providing some excellent reminders of what makes the band unique.
It’s generally when the film strays away from this that it starts to fall apart a little, in particular a late attempt to add drama by covering a ruckus that hit the New York music blogging scene about allegations of Merritt being a racist. Not only was this really a minor tiff, with even the journalist who made the original allegations appearing in the film to say that he was wrong, but it feels very parochial – New York may be the centre of the popular music world, but it’s hardly likely that anybody outside of the band and the bloggers involved really cared about the story. Also despite roping in some fairly impressive celebrity fans (Sarah Silverman, Neil Gaiman and Peter Gabriel for example) their points of view get very little screen-time, presumably these are merely short snippets from much longer interviews and we’ll see the rest on the DVD.
That’s not to say that the film lacks any new information – there’s some rather appreciated fleshing out of the band’s background, including footage of shaky early incarnations (it’s nice to know that genius has to start out somewhere and doesn’t arrive fully formed) and a later appearance by Merritt’s quite fascinating mother (even if it is, again, disappointingly brief). It’s in the film’s final moments that the real story reveals itself, and it’s a bittersweet one. As Merritt decides to quit New York for LA, Gonson, whose life seems to revolve around him and the band is left to ponder what she, now a middle aged woman, is going to do with the time this opens up. Despite her cloaking it in self deprecating humour, it really is surprisingly, touchingly sad. Which, as anyone whose studied the lyric booklet in a Magnetic Fields album will agree, is a perfectly fitting end.
