itmightgetloud

Review:
There are films that blow you away with their exceptional directing and then there are films that hold you in awe simply because they were destined to do so. For music lovers, particularly rock and roll and guitar fans, Davis Guggenheim’s It Might Get Loud, is precisely in that latter category. It is awesome and it is fun and you can’t exactly pin point why, you just know that it is.
Guggenheim is starting to make a name for being able to turn otherwise mundane film scenarios into exciting and engaging feature length ideas. He did it with Al Gore’s slide show presentation in An Inconvenient Truth and he has done it again with a sit down meeting between three of rock and roll’s living guitar legends. Now granted, it’s a little bit easier to make Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White interesting than Al Gore, but it’s still a filming nightmare to base a documentary on three people who have never met before sitting down for a chat.
But Guggenheim is smarter then most. Though Jimmy Page is quite reclusive, the Edge is slightly stuck up and Jack White is constantly looking for a reason to be pissed off, the three somehow click when the guitars come out. The only way to describe the interaction is by comparing it to an encounter between a classical artist, a modernist and a post-modernist. All three have established themselves and their viewpoints, but they still all respect and admire each other for the work they’ve done. Jimmy Page is of the classical background; he has taken the past and built upon it. The Edge is a modernist; he has cast off history and is constantly pushing forward into newer ideas. Jack White is the post-modernist; he’s trying to pull the original rock and roll roots back up to our current times.
This is the crux of It Might Get Loud and it is for this reason alone everyone should see Guggenheim’s documentary. Every artistic branch should wish to be so lucky to have surviving legends from each school of thought willing to meet and discuss their beliefs. And once you move beyond the legends themselves (and this is quite hard to do) you find that you really learn a lot; not only about the music, but about the passion it takes to create on such a phenomenal level.
It also helps to have a kick ass soundtrack to guide you through (does it even need to be mentioned that this film sports one of the best rock soundtracks ever compiled?).
Unfortunately, Guggenheim repeats some of the same mistakes he made in An Inconvenient Truth. He actually gets star struck and unfortunately pulls audiences away far too often from the “meeting of geniuses” to follow the artists individually. Though these are wonderful encounters, there never seems to be logic or flow to them, just a mismatch collection of personal encounters. The documentary waffles between biographies and musical lessons and this becomes frustrating for fans who want to see more of Jimmy Page picking up on the nuances of a White Stripes song while Jack White twists a U2 song into something bluesy and raw. These moments are few and far between and I would have willingly sat through an hour longer screen time if it meant witnessing more of them.
But who am I to judge? After all, Guggenheim allowed us to even imagine such a collection of talent on screen at one time. Besides, like I said, even during the flaws and miscues you just can’t stop thinking “this is awesome.” Throwing these three legends together is certainly an experiment worth watching over and over and over again.

Review by Matthew Abshire

Informative: 3.5 - the film itself seems too excited with all the possibilities to settle on anything too substantive
Entertainment: 5 - there is an overwhelming sense of awe (read: 'awesome!') from the second this film starts until the final credit rolls by
Technical: 4 - excellent use of music, framing, editing, etc - though it can be a little unfocused
Overall: 4 - yes there are mistakes, but if you ever want to sit down and talk music with these artists, this might be the closest you'll ever get