January 27–February 3, 2000
movies
Mugge Shots
A guide to Mugge releases on video.
Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980) Filmed on a shoestring, this is Mugge’s sketch of the inscrutable Philadelphia legend who claimed to hail from Saturn. A little ragged round the edges, but Mugge captures Sun Ra in all his polyphonic glory.
Black Wax (1982) Gil Scott-Heron is part soul crooner, part stand-up comedian, part orator and part cornball. Walking around D.C., play-acting with wax models of heads of state, sardonically lecturing from the stage and occasionally singing, Scott-Heron is always performing, which both reveals his character and frustrates attempts to understand it.
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Gospel According to Al Green (1984) Mugge’s favorite of all his films, it’s a captivating and insightful chronicle of Green’s conversion to Christianity and the intersection between soul and sacred music. Green’s as inscrutable in his own way as Sun Ra and Scott-Heron, but in an impromptu interview in a recording studio, he suddenly opens up, telling stories he hasn’t told for decades. Even when he’s not performing, Green’s screen presence is magnetic, and the excerpts from Green’s ecstatic church service are mind-blowing in their intensity. (The DVD includes the service’s climactic hour as a bonus audio track.) This is quite simply the mother lode. If you only check out one of these films, start here.
The Return of Rubén Blades (1985) Even though Blades’ pop/salsa hybrid isn’t the most exciting music Mugge’s ever filmed, Return captivates with its subject’s articulate musings on the political state of Latin America and Panama’s relationship to the United States. More successful at engaging political issues than Black Wax, it’s a critical film for anyone who thinks Latin pop started with Ricky and Enrique.
Saxophone Colossus (1986) Sonny Rollins, "the greatest living jazz improviser," is the subject of Mugge’s last individual-centered feature. Mostly a performance film interspersed with interview clips, the film captures Rollins at an outdoor concert in a rock quarry (where he famously jumped from the stage and broke his heel) as well as at the premiere of his "Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra" in Japan. Although the film unnecessarily brings in talking heads to explain Rollins’ greatness, what’s most striking is Rollins’ colossal modesty, his insistence that he’s never reached the goals he set for himself.
Hawaiian Rainbow (1987) Hawaiian music in all its weird familiarity and surprising difference is on display in Mugge’s first community portrait. Going beyond slack key to include gigantic men with heavenly falsettos and masters of the ukulele, this wide-ranging film reveals something new with each passing minute.
Kumu Hula: Keepers of a Culture (1989) Mugge’s most lyrical and rapturous movie, Kumu Hula reveals Hawaiian dance as a traditional storytelling form which goes far beyond hip-shaking and grass skirts. Detailing not only the art of hula but the various schisms between different breeds of traditionalists, the film grapples with the larger issue of what it means to keep tradition alive, and how you carry on the past without ignoring the present.
Deep Blues (1991) Perhaps Mugge’s most popular film, Deep Blues follows journalist Robert Palmer and Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart on a tour of Mississippi and Arkansas, introducing viewers to characters like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside who have since become mini-legends. With its evocation of juke joint hollers and back porch jams, it’s a revelatory portrait which smells of road dust, whiskey and sweat, creating a world so real you can almost step into it. Watching Lonnie Pitchford play slide guitar on a wire nailed to the side of a house (called a diddley bow), you get the sense of a culture and a region steeped so deeply in music that it hangs always in the air, just waiting to be captured as it has been so ably here.
Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson (1999) A bit of a disappointment, Mugge’s most recent film focuses too much on a Johnson symposium held at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, a place which neatly sums up everything that’s wrong with music today. It’s morbidly fascinating to watch scholars argue over minutiae, or to watch Bob Weir mangle Johnson’s otherworldly blues, but even though Mugge means to satirize their foolishness, they seem more worth ignoring than poking fun at. There’s still plenty of meat here, from an interview with Johnson’s childhood friend to a spooky outdoor rendition of "Come On in My Kitchen" by Tracy Nelson, Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas. Those moments rebuke the scholars’ foolishness, if they don’t erase it.
See Sam’s 1999 review of Hellhounds.
(All $19.99 VHS/ $24.99 DVD.)
