There’s a pretty traditional formula that most music documentaries follow. They’ll often center around a standard birth to mainstream success overview, populated with talking heads and contemporaries to contextualize the music, politics, and social scenes. Add in some extended concert footage and, maybe, discussions with whomever the title subject is, and you have about 95% of the structure and content of a music doc. What makes the new Joan Baez documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” stand out — both among documentaries, more generally, but also work about Baez — is its willingness to burrow into Baez’s psyche.
Ostensibly about Baez’s final “Fare Thee Well” tour, directors Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle are far less interested in following around Baez for a nostalgic trip through her vast discography than they are in excavating how Baez’s almost meteoric rise to fame both affected her and her family. This is a film that sometimes feels like an extended session of therapy — for better and worse. Further, the film’s biggest revelations are connected to some long-held repressed memories concerning Baez’s father, an emotional sub-section in a film that largely lets Baez free-associate her way through her career.
And what a career it has been. From her early days playing at Club 47 in Harvard Square to her outspoken interest in the Civil Rights movement and the war in Vietnam, ‘I Am A Noise’ gives Baez the space to talk through her career highlights, as the film overlays archival footage of an early Baez adjusting to the rigors of touring and public celebrity. It’s also fascinating just how many people she was close with, as images of her walking alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or James Baldwin accompany first-person interviews.
Of course, we are also given more insight into her relationship with Bob Dylan, who she openly says was more boy than myth at the point of their initial meeting. Anyone who knows about their history, and Baez’s increased ambivalence about her never-ending association with him, will find little new here. But, it’s also refreshing that Dylan is neither ignored for the sake of subjective revisionism nor does he take over the entire documentary, a possibility considering how evasive he is compared to Baez’s freewheeling openness.
This approach is immensely helped by Baez’s archive. One of the first shots is of her vast collection of recordings, diaries, and drawings. This allows O’Connor, Navasky, and O’Boyle to tell most of the story with Baez’s own voice, including audio letters that she sent home while on the road, and even animating her drawings to visualize an early interest in activism or her turbulent home life.
Anyone who’s read about Baez or seen her PBS’s 2009 “American Masters” documentary might wonder what else there is to say about an artist-activist who has always been radically transparent, but ‘I Am a Noise’ most interest is vested in her familial relationships. Besides her complicated relationship with her father, the film also narrows in on the other Baez sibling, including extended sections about her sister Mimi, who also aspired to be a singer, and may have held some animosity towards Joan for her fame.
“I Am a Noise” adopts the metaphor of a therapy session, including an unseen voice repeatedly telling Baez to recenter herself. It’s an effective framework for moving between the past and the present, but it also bumps against the other framing device of Baez’s final tour, which mainly seems like an afterthought. A little more about the tour itself, or even her decision to tour alongside her son — who says they didn’t always have the best relationship — would’ve helped bridge the two timelines.
Further, there is shockingly little music in a film centered around a singer. Only a few snippets of Baez singing at Dr. King’s demonstrations, or alongside Dylan are provided. Although, there is a hilarious interlude of her imitating “Bobby singing Joan Baez” that’s quite spot-on. Little is even said about her 2018 album “Whistle Down the Wind,” which serves as the inspiration behind the tour.
O’Connor, Navasky, and O’Boyle are much more interested in her most prolific period during the ‘60s and ‘70s, skipping over the ‘80s almost entirely, except for a brief discussion of her participation in the 1985 Live Aid concert. While “I Am a Noise” may be fragmentary, that seems to be part of its overall design. By foregrounding Baez’s family life, the filmmakers have found a novel approach to exploring Baez and have crafted a compelling documentary in the process. [B+]