Berlin Review: ‘Joan Baez I Am A Noise’
deadline.comFolk music icon Joan Baez, who’s now 82, came of age just as musicians’ live gigs were often recorded and thereby preserved for the record, virtues that are used to advantage in Joan Baez I Am A Noise.
An up-close, intimate and mostly frank account of a career that arched across more than 60 years of musical and political expression while countless trends came and went, this elaborate documentary navigates adroitly through the professional and the personal aspects of a very full life, one marked by far more good fortune than bad.
Whether you’ve followed her career for decades or are just now discovering her, the life under scrutiny is undeniably impressive and ceaselessly engaging.
The film, which premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, is prefaced by a knowing remark from Gabriel Garcia Marquez — “Everyone has three lives: the public, the private, and the secret.” One can fairly say that the documentary impressively handles the first component, reveals some frank examples of the second and allows fleeting glimpses of the third.
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