Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic For the last 60 years, it’s been hard to see Joan Baez as anything other than a saintly figure, or certainly, at the least, a beatifically placid one.
Early on in the new documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise,” over shots of its subject being swarmed by fans at the height of her early-‘60s success, the present-day Baez quips that much of the public came to view her like the Virgin Mary — and confesses that, with her head swelled by fame at the time, she was not much inclined to disagree.
But occasional flashes of ego seem like the least of the psychological problems dogging the singer, as portrayed in a music doc that starts out as a fly-on-the-wall view of Baez’s farewell tour and ends as an extended look at family trauma and recovery from mental illness.
Launching at the Berlinale, then followed by a stop at the more music-focused SXSW Film Festival, “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” almost has more to bite off than one biopic can effectively chew.
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