Glenn here and welcome back to Doc Corner. Each Tuesday we're bringing reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we’re looking at films that screened at the just-ended SXSW about musical icon Gary Numan, self-helper Tony Robbins, and mature-age trans women.
Gary Numan: Android in La La Land
You know I hate to ask
But are 'friends' electric?
Only mine's broke down
And now I've no-one to love
Like many artists of Numan’s vintage who were experimenting with electronic music, there was a queerness to him, an otherness that the made him a symbol to hordes of young audiences who had never seen or heard anything like him before. He was a musician whose dark and complex lyrics were perfectly paired with the aloof roboticism of his performance – an android dreaming of the electric beeps and boops of a Moog synthesizer. But for a performer who made much of his early fame and success off of the obscure oddness of his lyrics and imagery, this documentary by Steve Read and Rob Alexander is awfully straight.
I can only wish that Read and Alexander had taken some of that electro-punk attitude as inspiration for while Gary Numan: Android in La La Land will be an enjoyable sit for fans of the 58-year-old British singer famous for songs like “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” (like myself), but as cinema it lacks something propulsive. This brand of musical comeback doc is certainly popular – recent examples like Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets and I Am Thor were mostly more successful thanks to meatier narrative hooks – and the two directors are wise to focus in on some of the more unique elements of Numan’s life such as his long-standing marriage to a fan and his anxious worry about an impending comeback record while on a family vacation. Still, Android in La La Land works best with it fuses Numan’s abstract lyrics and music with strange beautiful images rather than the musician-moves-to-LA narrative that forms its core. The musical sequences are as vibrant as you would expect, but the power of the songs and his genius doesn’t shine through any clearer than if simply listening to them.
Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
Tony Robbins describes himself as a “practical psychologist” and tells his audiences of doting devotees that “we’re going to get emotionally fit” and “what’s more significant than love?” My prior knowledge of Robbins was limited to late-night infomercials and a cameo in Shallow Hal, but having now seen a two-hour documentary about his life I can say I still know only the basics. For a documentary about him, he never actually gives us a glimpse into his life and how he got there, preferring to keep family history to vague illusions and outright avoidance.
I had expected this work by Joe Berlinger to be something of an insightful look inside the world of Robbins and his $5000 “Date with Destiny” seminars that attracts nearly 3000 people seeking to having personal wellness breakthroughs. Not an irational thought considering Berlinger made the Paradise Lost trilogy and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, but it turns out the director is himself a Robbins convert – we’re informed as much in the press kit – whose real goal here appears to have been to create a work of modern day propaganda. A piece of corporate marketing that’s been flashed out with all the aerial-shots of Florida coastlines and appearances by celebrity fans (I guess Julianne Hough counts as a celebrity) that money can buy.
Naturally, in its effort to evangelize Robbins, for a sceptic like me it works in the exact opposite way. The methods used to hoodwink people into believing they have achieved some sort of healing are often transparent, and occasionally frightening. Take for instance when he bullies a woman into calling her boyfriend (who, I think I understood, was too nice), put him on speaker, and proceed to break up with him in front of an entire crowd of people. By not actually offering any deeper, critical insight I Am Not Your Guru, in a way, harms its subject. Of course, it is easy to see why Berlinger and other followers are enthralled by Robbins – he’s charismatic, handsome and speaks directly. But the film plays only to these acolytes. Non-believes need not apply for this course.
The Pearl
Consider it the anti-Caitlyn Jenner or the opposite of Transparent’s Maura Pfefferman. The Pearl from directors Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca focuses on several transgender women in rural communities of the Pacific Northwest region. Beginning at a retreat where everybody is free to live as they please – a transgender convention of sorts – we soon splinter off and begin to follow siblings Krystal and Jodie, Amy who opens her house to vulnerable trans youth, and Nina who wrestles with how to come out as trans to her wife of 40 years.
There is fascinating content here, but it also appears to be a whole separate movie worth of content cut out completely. It’s subjects are not fleshed out enough to make them extraordinary doc subjects. It is exciting to see people such as these on screen from a completely different part of the world and with entirely different outlooks on life, but the criss-crossing between them between Washington state and Canada has little rhyme or reason. How, for instance, is the trip to Bangkok for gender conformation surgery treated as little more than a footnote? Why are we so in the dark about Nina’s family who, by film’s end, the audience isn’t really aware even exists. Their lives are far from the kind me typically see, and that is indeed refreshing, but I only we were given more of a chance to see it and in clearer focus.
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Release: Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru will play on Netflix from June. Gary Numan: Android in La La Land and The Pearl are seeking distribution, but will likely continue to play the festival circuit given their topics are popular ones for audience-seeking fests.
Oscar Chances: Netflix will no doubt have plenty of bigger fish to fry come Oscar season. Last year's two nominations - for What Happened, Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire was quite a coup (albeit an expected one), but Tony Robbins is nowhere near the calibre of those titles. And despite that category's fondness for musician docs, Numan just isn't the sort of singer who would be revered enough for voters to ignore some of its less successful elements.
Glenn here and welcome back to Doc Corner. Each Tuesday we're bringing reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we’re looking at films that screened at the just-ended SXSW about musician Gary Numan, self-helper Tony Robbins, and mature-age trans women.
-
Gary Numan: Android in La La Land
You know I hate to ask
But are 'friends' electric?
Only mine's broke down
And now I've no-one to love
Like many artists of Numan’s vintage who were experimenting with electronic music, there was a queerness to him, an otherness that the made a symbol to hordes of young audiences who had never seen or heard anything like him before. He was a musician whose dark and complex lyrics were perfectly paired with the aloof roboticism of his performance – an android dreaming of the electric beeps and boops of a Moog synthesizer. But for a performer who made much of his early fame and success off of the obscure oddness of his lyrics and imagery, this documentary by Steve Read and Rob Alexander is awfully straight.
I can only wish that Read and Alexander had taken some of that electro-punk attitude as inspiration for while Gary Numan: Android in La La Land will be an enjoyable sit for fans of the 58-year-old British singer famous for songs like “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric”, but as cinema it lacks something propulsive. This brand of musical comeback doc is certainly popular – recent examples like Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets and I Am Thor were mostly more successful thanks to meatier narrative hooks – and the two directors are wise to focus in on some of the more unique elements of Numan’s life such as his long-standing marriage to a fan and his anxious worry about an impending comeback record while on a family vacation. Still, Android in La La Land works best with it fuses Numan’s abstract lyrics and music with strange beautiful images rather than the musician-moves-to-LA narrative that forms its core. The musical sequences are as vibrant as you would expect, but the power of the songs and his genius doesn’t shine through any clearer than if simply listening to them.
-
Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
Tony Robbins describes himself as a “practical psychologist” and tells his audiences of doting devotees that “we’re going to get emotionally fit” and “what’s more significant than love?” My prior knowledge of Robbins was limited to late-night infomercials and a cameo in Shallow Hal, but having now seen a two-hour documentary about his life I can say I still know only the basics. For a documentary about him, he never actually gives us a glimpse into his life and how he got there, preferring to keep family history of vague illusions and outright avoidance.
I had expected this work by Joe Berlinger to be something of an insightful look inside the world of Robbins and his $5000 “Date with Destiny” seminar that attracts nearly 3000 people seeking to having personal breakthroughs. It turns out the director of the Paradise Lost trilogy and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is himself a Robbins convert – we’re informed as much in the press kit – whose real goal here appears to have been to create a work of modern day propaganda. A piece of corporate marketing that’s been flashed out with all the aerial-shots of Florida coastlines and appearances by celebrity fans (I guess Julianne Hough counts as a celebrity) that money can buy.
Naturally, in its effort to evangelize Robbins, for a sceptic like me it works in the exact opposite way. The methods used to hoodwink people into believing they have achieved some sort of healing are often transparent, and occasionally frightening such as when he all but bullies a woman into calling her boyfriend (who, I think I understood, was too nice), put him on speakerphone, and proceed to break up with him in front of an entire crowd of people. By not actually offering any deeper, critical insight I Am Not Your Guru harms its subject. Of course, it is easy to see why Berlinger and other followers are enthralled by Robbins – he’s charismatic, handsome and speaks directly. But the film plays only to these acolytes. Non-believes need not apply for this course.
-
The Pearl
Consider it the anti-Caitlyn Jenner or the opposite of Transparent’s Maura Pfefferman. The Pearl from directors Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca focuses on several transgender women in rural communities of the Pacific Northwest region. Beginning at a retreat where everybody is free to live as they please – a transgender convention of sorts – we soon splinter off and begin to follow siblings Krystal and Jodie, Amy who opens her house to vulnerable trans youth, and Nina who wrestles with how to come out as trans to her wife of 40 years.
There is fascinating content here, but it also appears to be a whole separate movie worth of content cut out completely. It’s subjects are not fleshed out enough to make them extraordinary doc subjects. It is exciting to see people such as these on screen from a completely different part of the world and with entirely different outlooks on life, but the criss-crossing between them between Washington state and Canada has little rhyme or reason. How, for instance, is the trip to Bangkok for gender conformation surgery treated as little more than a footnote? Why are we so in the dark about Nina’s family who, by film’s end, the audience isn’t really aware even exists. Their lives are far from the kind me typically see, and that is indeed refreshing, but I only we were given more of a chance to see it and in clearer focus.