The Last Great Film I Saw Was...

It Might Get Loud, 2009, dir. Davis Guggenheim.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229360/

It Might Get Loud celebrates the glory of rock guitar by gathering three generations of players - Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White - to talk music and jam. In lesser hands, this documentary might have become self-indulgent and meandering, but Guggenheim organizes the footage of their backstories, jam session, and live performances so well that it's an absolute dream for fans of rock guitar.

Unlike other music documentaries, we hear the stories behind the music directly from the artists themselves. We watch as The Edge rediscovers a 4-track demo of Where the Streets Have No Name. We see Page giddily play air guitar along with one of his favorite songs, "Rumble." We go from Page speaking about his predilection for dark and light contrasts to a balls-out performance of "Stairway to Heaven."

The guitars sound incredible, and the music is mixed really well. Seeing newly-mixed concert footage of Led Zeppelin in a movie theater alone is worth the price of admission. But the careful editing keeps the film moving forward, and provides philosophical contrasts and commonalities by switching off between the three subjects. Jimmy Page steals the show as the vanguard of rock, comfortable in his old age to happily open up and storytell. Jack White can become tiresome because he's constantly putting forth an image of himself, but that may be because of his youth and the fact that unlike the other two, he has yet to carve out his own artistic legacy (he spends most of his time talking about influences and whom he tries to imitate). But even he is unable to contain his joy as he watches Jimmy Page play the riff to "Whole Lotta Love," one of the film's priceless moments. The powerful and selective use of concert footage, the thoughtful organization of artistic philosophies, and the spontaneous moments of a rock union make for a great documentary, and it's a tribute to the skill of the filmmakers to take this material and create something insightful, entertaining, and new.