I don't know how to feel about this movie. A friend of mine recommended it and described as "life changing". She happens to a great musician and has similar challenges with life, as do I. I think there is a tendency to romanticize the mentally unbalanced artist. I couldn't help thinking of Kurt Cobain throughout this movie, even before I knew that Daniel influenced his music. Every decade is a reaction to the decade the preceded (or century, day, millennium, whatever) and the 90's was a reaction to the sickeningly sweet optimism and perkiness of the shiny 80's. The 90's was about angst and pain and suffering and ugliness. It seems Daniel was the poster child for these moping musicians.
Now don't get me wrong, I've done my share of moping, and I am a musician but I fight it every single day, it is a useless state to be in, and yet people like Daniel and Kurt wallow in it every single day, they practically bathe in it. It's not healthy, as demonstrated by the death of Kurt and of Daniels many breakdowns. The people that glorify this pain are doing more harm than good. I think the ones that do have a romantic notion of emotional pain, they must not know it, truly know it, because unrequited love might make for good songs, but it's a shitty thing to happen, I can't actually think of anything worse emotionally. At least Daniel turned these feelings into somewhat happy music (which might be where the bittersweetness comes from, the sad lyrics over major chords).
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder (perhaps that is where the eye obsession comes from) and I agree that a lot of his lyrics are quite brilliant "following my broken dreams" is one hell of a line. I have to say though that his art work I don't understand, I suppose it's supposed to match the lo-fi music, but I don't think it's very good.
I guess if you are a fan of Daniel, this movie must be like a wet dream, similar to the Dogtown and Z-boys doc, which had buckets of archival footage, this movie has more archival footage and audio tapes than you could possibly hope for. It's almost as if Daniel was anticipating a film being made about him and was documenting his life in preparation. I feel as though these filmmakers are also probably big Cobain fans and probably secretly hoped that had such a treasure trove of his life. After seeing this movie I suddenly feel bad that I don't have similar archival material of my early days, in fact I recently through out a whole bunch of my early tapes I used to mail to my friend who lived in another city. Then again, I saved the good stuff, most of it wasn't any good.
Is Daniel Johnston a genius? Well the filmmakers and his fans obviously think so. I can only think of all the brilliant musicians I know that are 100 times better who are playing in bars or in their basement and never get to Scandanavia or have music execs battle over them and give them dream recording contracts. It seems that the myth of Daniel is stronger than the actual person, who actually seems quite sad really, much like Kurt was. I am happy that he was able to move out of parents basement though (as revealed in the commentary) and able to buy a house. And he is still playing music, which is important.
Oh well, i've run out of things to say. Pain is pain.
Now don't get me wrong, I've done my share of moping, and I am a musician but I fight it every single day, it is a useless state to be in, and yet people like Daniel and Kurt wallow in it every single day, they practically bathe in it. It's not healthy, as demonstrated by the death of Kurt and of Daniels many breakdowns. The people that glorify this pain are doing more harm than good. I think the ones that do have a romantic notion of emotional pain, they must not know it, truly know it, because unrequited love might make for good songs, but it's a shitty thing to happen, I can't actually think of anything worse emotionally. At least Daniel turned these feelings into somewhat happy music (which might be where the bittersweetness comes from, the sad lyrics over major chords).
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder (perhaps that is where the eye obsession comes from) and I agree that a lot of his lyrics are quite brilliant "following my broken dreams" is one hell of a line. I have to say though that his art work I don't understand, I suppose it's supposed to match the lo-fi music, but I don't think it's very good.
I guess if you are a fan of Daniel, this movie must be like a wet dream, similar to the Dogtown and Z-boys doc, which had buckets of archival footage, this movie has more archival footage and audio tapes than you could possibly hope for. It's almost as if Daniel was anticipating a film being made about him and was documenting his life in preparation. I feel as though these filmmakers are also probably big Cobain fans and probably secretly hoped that had such a treasure trove of his life. After seeing this movie I suddenly feel bad that I don't have similar archival material of my early days, in fact I recently through out a whole bunch of my early tapes I used to mail to my friend who lived in another city. Then again, I saved the good stuff, most of it wasn't any good.
Is Daniel Johnston a genius? Well the filmmakers and his fans obviously think so. I can only think of all the brilliant musicians I know that are 100 times better who are playing in bars or in their basement and never get to Scandanavia or have music execs battle over them and give them dream recording contracts. It seems that the myth of Daniel is stronger than the actual person, who actually seems quite sad really, much like Kurt was. I am happy that he was able to move out of parents basement though (as revealed in the commentary) and able to buy a house. And he is still playing music, which is important.
Oh well, i've run out of things to say. Pain is pain.