Monday, January 4, 2010

It Might Get Loud

Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page sit down together to talk about whether the guitar found them or they found the guitar, and play for each other and together. The look on Jack White’s face when Jimmy Page starts crunching “Ramble On” is, well, check it out. And when the three of them start pushing “Kashmir” around between them your mouth will drop open with a dumb, slack smile. Intercut with interviews and staged pieces and POV verite clips, it has a loose, free-flowing ease and when it’s over you feel, “can’t we hang out just a little longer?” Well, there are some interesting deleted scenes to get you over the hump. That they were left out was the right choice, but they’re not the usual deleted scene dreck, worth a look.

And an interesting production note for aspiring documentarians: the director, Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), explains in the bonus press conference segment that he found his way in to this subject in the same way he stumbled on with Gore. He started with one-on-one interviews that a) provide the bulk of the voiceover and b) point him toward the things he’ll want to film with a full crew. Smart and economical.