By Woody Weingarten
The documentary film Joan Baez: I Am a Noise appears to check all the right boxes, revealing three lives of the iconic singer/protester and civil rights activist.
The Public:
• Becoming world-famous overnight as a barefoot thrush at age 18 and having Time magazine plaster her face on its cover.
• Being immersed in a relationship with then unknown songwriter/singer Bob Dylan and helping catapult his career, only to have him break her heart (“It was horrible.”)
• Being married for five years to David Harris — an icon in the anti-Vietnam War movement whose outcries led him to be jailed for more than a year — and having a son with him.
• Relishing the marches where she accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. (“Nonviolent action is what I was born for”).
The Private:
• Having at least two mental breakdowns and dealing with decades of almost constant sensations of panic, depression, inadequacy, insecurity, and loneliness (she describes herself as “a personalized time bomb” and her inner life as “dark, dark, dark”).
• Experiencing midlife torment when her “career plunged into the abyss.”
• Agonizing because her two sisters, Mimi (Farina) and Pauline, distanced themselves from her, unable to live in the shadow of a star.
• Enduring racial slurs as a child because her physicist/inventor dad was Mexican and she, therefore, was “half-Mexican” and “thought I was inferior to the white kids, the rich kids.”
• Savoring a two-year lesbian relationship (“She was more feral than I”).
• Accepting the fact that her son, Gabe, still bemoans her frequent absences because she was “too busy saving the world.”
The Secret:
• Finding her father’s alleged sexual abuse (which she unearthed during hypnotherapy) “bone-shattering.”
The film stitches all that together, nearly seamlessly, yet might still leave a viewer with the sense that something’s missing, that some of the in-depth excursions into her psyche dig down only about 85 percent and that the most difficult truths are still covered. It’s not unlike checking out the headlines of a story rather than reading it all the way through.
Truly vulnerable moments are few in Joan Baez: I Am a Noise — the title, not incidentally, stems from a journal entry from her 13-year-old incarnation in reaction to being likened to the Virgin Mary, “I am not a saint, I am a noise.” Two stand out. Most moving is when she lovingly caresses her mother’s face on her death bed. Another is when she’s photographed taking off all her makeup.
But oddly absent from the film — which is distributed by Magnolia Pictures and deftly inserts Baez’s home movies, artwork (her originals as well as someone else’s animations), journal entries, and, surprisingly, therapy tapes — are:
• Her multi-tune appearance at Woodstock.
• Her two-year relationship with Steve Jobs.
• Full-song performances (the doc does contain many, many fragments).
• Humor (one rare inclusion is her imitating Dylan imitating her).
Baez, who’s followed around — almost reality TV-like — during her final tour at age 79 (she’s now 82), admits she likes being the center of attention. Even now, although she says her once pure voice has turned “raggedy.” That craving, the doc demonstrates, is evident when she dances to street drummers when no one else is dancing.
As to fame, she says, “I was the right voice at the right time.”
The singer, who attended Palo Alto High School and now lives in Woodside in San Mateo County, also enjoyed making tons of money when she was young, despite her father dissing her because he’d always had to work harder for it. She particularly enjoyed literally tossing $100 bills at him and the rest of her family.
Regarding her dad, who denied inflicting any abuse, she tells the filmmakers — Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor, and Maeve O’Boyle (who also deserves major accolades for her editing skills) — that if only 20% of what she remembers about the abuse is true, that’s damning enough.
Baez doesn’t only point fingers at her father. She, who says she’s been diagnosed as having multiple personalities, confesses that she’s simply “not great at the one-on-one relationships — I’m great at one-on-2,000.”
When all’s said and done, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is a fascinating portrait of somebody we thought we knew but didn’t. Though it’s possibly 20 minutes too long, it’s definitely like having a backstage pass into all three of her lives.
The film’s ending is clearly intended to show her finally at peace, but it feels too posed, too contrived, as she dances — eyes closed — with her dog as she recites lines from a Robert Frost poem that indicates she’s not done yet (“…miles to go before I sleep”).
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ASR Senior Writer Woody Weingarten is a voting member of the S.F. Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net
Joan Baez: I am a Noise
- Opens October 13
Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco
AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco
AMC Bay Street 16 in Emeryville
Landmark Piedmont Theatre in Oakland
Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley
Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa
Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol in Sabastopol
3Below Theaters in San Jose
Landmark Del Mar Theater in Santa Cruz - Opens October 16
Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael
***** Q&A with Joan Baez following the November 3rd, 7:00pm screening!
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