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CHUCK BERRY
Director: Jon Brewer MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:38 Release Date: 9/11/20 (virtual cinema) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 10, 2020 Chuck Berry, the "Father of Rock and Roll," receives an adoring and scattershot tribute by director Jon Brewer. His documentary Chuck Berry may follow the musician's career in a straightforward, mostly chronological order, but the movie's focus—what aspects of the man's personal life, career, musical technique, and legacy it covers—is so broad that we only come away with vague pieces of the man. There is a lot here. Some of it is insightful, such as when other musicians pick apart Berry's guitar stylings and show how he adapted the blues (One guitarist explains why Berry, rehearsing for the concerts chronicled in the 1987 film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, gave Keith Richards such grief about how to bend a string). A lot of it isn't, such as when Berry's widow explains hearing her husband play "Maybellene," his first single and hit, for the first time. "It's very good," she says she told him, and that's the end of that. Brewer has included plenty of interviews, with family members (including most of Berry's children and a grandson) and lots of musicians (They're of various degrees of fame, and while the less recognizable ones get into the most depth about Berry's technique, the notable ones are a mixed bag: Alice Cooper and Steve Van Zandt clearly care, and Gene Simmons sure puts on a show of appearing as if he does). The interviews guide the narrative—for better, for worse, and mostly for adequately keeping the story moving. As for that story, it tells of Berry's roots, going from a youth of crime (Black-and-white dramatizations of Berry's early and later run-ins with the law mostly give Brewer a chance to play with stylization—adding bold colors to certain elements and having Berry's stand-in dance through events) and settling into domesticity, before ascending to great success. It's the usual, with the sudden rise and gradual fall, and the complicated role that race played in Berry's professional opportunities are addressed but often sidestepped. The same goes for Berry's own personal troubles—womanizing, shady financial dealings, a scandal involving cameras in a women's restroom. Chuck Berry has to bring up these and other things, but nobody offers much more than excuses, justifications, or denials. The participants and the movie itself like Berry too much to let us see the man as he was. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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