In Search of the Miraculous

Notes on Some Recent Music Documentaries

MAX GOLDBERG

J. Hoberman counted Fire Music among the best films of 2021, but his capsule review sings a different tune: “Not a great documentary,” he begins, “but an effective reminder that…” Say no more. I find it almost touching that a hardcore cineaste like Hoberman should countenance such an ungainly film for the sake of “Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, et al.” For music like that, anything. Still, we might ask of the film itself: why this lack of, well, fire? Director Tom Sturgal organizes his history like a Wikipedia entry, dutifully split between big names and rough chronology. In spite of some remarkable archival material—much of it from earlier films like Ron Mann’s Imagine the Sound (1981) and Robert Mugge’s Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980)—the film is in…

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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 94 - Spring 2023

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