Cannes Review: Ethan Coen’s ‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind’

deadline.com:

For his directing debut after brother Joel’s first solo outing with The Tragedy of Macbeth, Ethan Coen has chosen a similar saga of ruthless ambition and soul-devouring guilt, telling the rise and fall — and rise again — of Jerry Lee Lewis, from farmer’s son to rock’n’roll idol.

Coen’s Special Screenings Cannes Film Festival entry Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind enters a very crowded music-doc field with an approach that may confound those expecting a linear narrative and the traditional talking-head format.

What they’ll get is a largely first-person recollection, using snippets culled from many years of the singer’s TV interviews, interspersed with amazing live footage that highlights his incredible versatility, moving effortlessly between rock’n’roll, rockabilly, blues, blues-soul, country-rock and country-blues; acing subgenre after subgenre.A better title for the film comes from a conversation Lewis had back in the early days with Sun Records maestro Sam Phillips, during gaps in recording any number of his one-take 1950s hits, from “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” to “Great Balls of Fire.” Tortured by his love of rock’n’roll, Lewis — who styles himself as “Christian-minded” rather than Christian like his cousin Jimmy Swaggart — voices his concerns about the ungodly feelings his musical talent unleashes in him, asking, “How can the devil save souls?” It’s a question that haunted his peers, notably Johnny Cash (fleetingly glimpsed) and Little Richard, but Lewis arguably went much further than either in his tempestuous private life.

The opening of the film sets this up with eyebrow-raising archive video of Lewis playing “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye” on The Ed Sullivan Show, undercutting the bleeding-heart