Revue of “sidewalks”: the Indie-Rock group of Stephen Malkmus in its entirety, in a creative way

As an introduction, “pavements”, director Alex Ross PerryExperimental hybrid documentary on the sidewalk of Indie-Rock paragons of the 90s, describes the group “the most important and influential group in the world”, a label which seems to embarrass them and their main self-efforated singer, Stephen Malkmus. The road has never been U2 or Nirvana. Nothing about them suggests a term as grandiose as “important”, even less the soul like Kurt Cobain, whose more personal words are far from magnetic poetic poetry in the high -end refrigerator of Malkmus, with its play of word full of spirit and its casual juxtapositions.

And yet, let us whisper this part as quietly as possible: Perry sincerely believes in the size defining the era of the era of the road. And with “sidewalks”, he made a film that seeks nobly and triumphantly a way to capture the essence of the group. This does not mean that it finds it easily, because the rough edges of this story could never be issued in a biopic like “Bohemian Rhapsody” Or an episode of an hour of “Behind the Music” by VH1. What Perry has achieved here is perhaps better expressed by the name of the revolutionary album of Pavement in 1992, “Slanted and Enchanted”.

It is difficult to guess how non-fauns could find their way through “sidewalks”, because even devotees will have to find their foot in this conceptual cat cat project, which repairs a miniature history of the group through several distinct angles at the same time. Nowadays, Perry documents the period Robust meeting of Reunion in 2022Only the second time they took the road together since their rupture without ceremony in 2000 (Scott Kannberg, the second guitarist and singer of pavement known under the name of “Spiral Stirs”, recalls so attached to money before a 2010 meeting that he was about to take a job in the west coast of Seattle. And wiser, more overwhelmed by their uncomfortable relationship.

The road has exhausted like any other rock group, but a conventional treatment in terms of climb and fall would not suit them. Folding their story and their inheritance on each other like the layers of a Choux pastry shop, Perry and his publisher, the documentary filmmaker Robert Greene, combine the images of the tour with three other events, each building a piece of fanciful mythology. First of all, there are 1933-2002 sidewalks, an international exhibition that presents works of art, the old notebooks of Malkmus and other ephemeral, like a nail cut off from the original drummer Gary Young. Then there are two efforts staged, an Off-Broadway musical entitled “Slanted!” Enchanted! ” And a false biopic-hollywood entitled “Range Life”, featuring a cast of young recognizable faces, led by “Stranger Things” “Joe Keery as Malkmus. The sidewalk has never completely penetrated the dominant current, but Perry frees himself from imagining the group as a cultural force selling platinum, even if it has to rewrite their history by hand.

Although the “sidewalks” do not like to dwell in a single place for a very long time, it brings together a rough chronology in the history of the group of its suburban roots in Stockton, California, to its primordial iterations at the University of Virginia to the first single and EPs which led to five complete albums which passed the 1990s. Of their own: a humiliating tour opening for Sonic Youth, Malkmus taking shots at Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots in “Range Life”, Beavis and Butt-Head mocking the video for “Rattled by the Rush Virginia began to perform the mud of Lollapaloza.

But the “sidewalks” do its best for Yada-Yada through the chips and spend as much time as possible from rotating fantasies. To this end, the behind the scenes clips that Perry offers his sidewalk musical is the most delicious in the film, just for the counter-intuitive thrill to watch the children of theater sing and dance through a catalog that seems to challenge their essential seriousness. To hear an evocative discreet piece as “end” of 1997 performed by a scene full of virgin singers validates the conviction of Perry that the songs of Malkmus “can transcend their original shape”. You find yourself laughing at a montage of zoomers with fresh faces that try their hand to words like “you can never in quarantine the past”, then you could admit, with an equal astonishment, that it really sounds.

On the other hand, the film with a film, “Range Life”, is not at all a film, but a cunning which turns into a developed parody of the acting method. Perry frees himself to explore the process of simple preparation of a role in the abstract, much like the 2016 documentary of Greene “Kate plays Christine”, “ Who followed a real actor, Kate Lyn Sheil, as she was looking for the tragic life of journalist Christine Chubbuck, who committed suicide in the air. To play the famous enigmatic Malkmus, Kerry goes to great and often hilarious lengths to pin the man, including some visits to the Whitney Museum, where Malkmus worked as a security guard, and in search of taking a photo of the singer's language to better capture the mechanics of his “vocal flyure”. Looking at an iPhone photo from the inside of Malkmus' mouth, Kerry solemnly notices: “All the work I do comes from this place.”

At just over two hours, “pavements” can look a little like the notoriously distorted opus of the group “Wowee Zowee”, a double album with only three sides. However, the perfectly imperfect form of “sidewalks” is also adapted to those who appreciate the creative event of the group. It also looks like an appropriate companion in the latest characteristic of Perry's fiction, “Her Shel” of 2018, which strongly alludes to the life of the singer of life Courtney Courtney Love and pays a two -hour chaotic drama with a breathtaking final act.

Hole and pavement shared this main programming in Lollapalooza '95 – Love was able to play at night a more committed crowd – and between these two films, Perry told a prismatic story of the decade of the “alternative nation”, when figures so disappeared as love and Malkmus affected the same generation. They may not have ride comfortably, but Perry resumes their harmonies. However, there is still a great distance between the raw confessionals and adapted to the Love arenas and the shredded phrasing of Malkmus and the clever deconstruction. The “roads” are essential nonsense, preserving the enigmatic attraction of the group through the same mixture of irony and bad direction. It slips pleasantly through your reach.