Junun
Director: Paul
Thomas Anderson
Featuring: Jonny
Greenwood, Nigel Godrich, Ehtisham Khan Ajmeri, Gufran Ali
Rating: Four stars
out of five.
Available on iTunes
now.
Some of the most
evocative images created by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson have
involved the magic hour, the two times of day right when the sun is
on the horizon, right at dawn and at dusk. Adam Sandler's Barry Egan
receives his busted harmonium as the sun rises in Punch Drunk
Love. Freddie Quell picks cabbages all day until the descending
sun indicates it's time for him to drink his post-traumatic stress
away in the early section of The Master, and his climactic
motorcycle trip at the end features a setting sun, as well. It
is a time that is fleeting – it may only last for a few minutes.
Filmmakers must be confident in their own abilities, their setups,
their performers, and their crew members in order to capture
something, anything, worth watching while the moments slip away. It
is a search for the tipping point toward rightness, or even
perfection, in the human eye's ability to perceive beauty.
It is about the
moment when the edges of something are smoothed out and grace can
take over. It is something the musicians at the center of Anderson's
new documentary, Junun, understand well. They are obsessed
with reaching a different kind of magic hour, one more pertinent to
the act of crafting a song. That is why Anderson's camera attempts to
introduce each new song of the collaboration album between Radiohead
guitarist – and frequent Anderson feature film composer – Jonny
Greenwood and a slew of India's top musicians at the turning point
from a bunch of clanking noise to a melded, layered soundscape.
There is little
frustration in the world of Junun, at least between the
collaborators. They groan at the regular loss of power courtesy of a
shaky electrical grid in the town where they are working, meaning they cannot record or even use things like electric guitars for long stretches of time. But they
sit, both relaxed and coiled at the same time. They seem to enjoy
each other's company, regardless of any language barriers, and they
are always ready to get back to work; they're itching to do so
especially when the real-world circumstances prevent them the freedom
to do so.
Of course, before
the cameras rolled, there were probably plenty of disagreements about
how to piece together each song on the album, which shares the film's
title. But the strife of putting multiple people in a room to reach a
consensus is not what interests Anderson as he sits with his digital
cameras and a drone – with both serving as firsts in a career that
has been film-only to date – in the middle of these
multi-instrumentalists huddled in a circle. He finds them fine tuning
their ideas, with a series of head nods and short affirmations or
corrections, all while the other players around them build a groove.
It's hypnotic and relaxing to see and hear this process, and Anderson
does little but perform 360-degree turns to check on each section's
contributions.
Anderson's
fly-on-the-wall approach would perhaps be seen as disengaged if Junun
were about any other subject, but he wisely chooses to let the
music and mostly nonverbal interactions tell the story. There's a
looseness to the camerawork that is jarring coming from a man whose
previous films, especially since 2007's There Will Be Blood,
have put him on a path toward Stanley Kubrick levels of calculated
control over everything in the frame. There is a moment where
Anderson himself can be seen running past the screen as a musical
take reaches a “Eureka” crescendo. He picks up the camera and
shakily runs closer toward the group, which is operating on several
levels of satisfaction with the song, a way of saying, “We got it,”
without verbalizing anything.
And in that moment,
Junun's thesis becomes clear. It gets its magic hour shot. The
director, performers, and crew have said what they wanted to say, and
they are content. And all is right.
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