By Gwen Ansell | BD Live – Wed, Feb 27, 2013
THE Oscar for best documentary awarded to Searching for Sugar Man was, on a very mixed night for movie fans, one accolade it would be hard to deny. The film’s theme is South African — it tells the story of two Cape Town fans doggedly tracking down US singer Sixto Rodriguez: a legend in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, but with modest fame elsewhere, even in his homeland.
But beyond its local appeal, the film is close to a perfect example of a music documentary. Unlike much of the pedestrian hagiography that finds its way on to South African TV screens, it is not a simple trek from birth to death accompanied by a tedious succession of full-face-to-camera quotes.
On the surface, it has a compelling and classic storyline: the quest. That has enthralled audiences since Beowulf went in search of the monster’s mother, and probably in the flickering firelight of Neanderthal caves long before that.
Its characters (both the besotted, slightly bumbling fans, record-store manager Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, and the laid-back Rodriguez himself) are endearing, even if the script has been accused of blurring the facts slightly for the sake of drama.
The Mexican-American singer never disappeared quite as completely as the narrative implies; he merely had a local, successful but often semiprofessional musical existence, and an ordinary working-class life. And his music was not unique in having its tracks scratched by SABC censors, merely one of a very small number of "white" radio titles to suffer that fate. The film’s cinematography borrows from thrillers as much as from documentaries, keeping interest and excitement high as we explore bars, building sites and other locations, discovering with the searchers’ fresh, wondering eyes, a wholly unknown world.
That is the film’s first big strength: it acknowledges and illustrates the importance of context to any artist’s work. This was apartheid South Africa, isolated as far as the authorities could manage from the sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and integration of the 1970s international music scene.
Rodriguez’s socially conscious hippie lyrics and racial ambiguity were perfect as a fabric for embroidering liberal dreams. The film evokes that too.
Its second strength actually lies in the blurry narrative that some critics have disliked.
As much as it is an affair of words and notes, music is an affair of the heart. The whole industry runs on passion as well as money — a tension the confrontation with Rodriguez’s former manager illuminates beautifully. But the film isn’t really about the musician.
What Searching for Sugar Man captures perfectly is what it means to be a fan: the emotional commitment; the embrace of legends and mysteries, the dedication, the nostalgia.
If only more South African film makers dealing with our music could abandon dull chronology too, and capture its dreams.
Read more: http://za.news.yahoo.com/jazz-documentary-oscar-accolade-hard-deny-041819895--finance.html
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