Image: Sigur Rós
Text: Susie Kahlich
Concert films are tricky things. On the one hand, they seem like the next best thing to being there. But then there’s the rub: the thing about a great concert is you have to be there. It’s the whole point. Of course, not everyone in the world can attend every legendary concert: Hendrix at Woodstock, The Who at Kilburn, Prince at, well, anywhere. So the rest of us schmucks are stuck with concert footage or, to be nice about it, the concert film.
Very few concert films work, mostly because inherent in film is the fourth wall – the very thing that rock & roll exists to tear down. But sometimes a good director, paired with the right band, breaks through and you get a film like Stop Making Sense (1984), or The Last Waltz (1978), or even Born to Boogie (1972) (which not only had the advantage of a good director, but a director who understood the high of live performance and the caprices of rock & roll fame better than any other director, ever). Other than these select few and a handful of others, most concert films fall flat into the concert footage category, never rising above a mere documentary recording of something really cool… that you missed.
Inni, the concert film that accompanies Sigur Rós’ 2008 multi-media album of the same name, falls into this second category. Released in November, the film screened at Commune Image in Saint Ouen as part of the Journée Air d’Islande. Inni was the day’s highlight with two screenings for Sigur Rós fans. Moody, stark, shot in grainy black and white (in some places the film stock underwent three post-production processes to create the effect of found archival footage), the film takes you on stage with the boys during their 2008 performance in London’s Alexandra Palace.
While a few close-ups are striking visual treats – Jónsi’s contorted, wailing face, or Kjarri Sveinsson’s hands coaxing those haunting notes out of the piano keys – most of the footage floats around the empty spaces between performers on stage. Intercut with actual archival footage of band interviews over the past decade, Inni is more fine arts thesis film than concert film; the director seeming to be focused on being “arty” rather than giving us a true concert experience. The liner notes for the film state that it depicts “how it feels for both band and fan to experience Sigur Rós live,” but therein lies the problem. It’s impossible to interpret how a fan experiences a live performance because each experience is highly subjective and personal, especially with a group like Sigur Rós. Keeping the camera almost entirely onstage and at angles no fan will ever get to see at a live show may provide a very intimate portrait from Sigur Rós’ perspective, but the fans are left on the other side of a decidedly opaque fourth wall.
That being said, the Journée Air d’Islande was not all art film and Sigur Rós. The main café space served an all-day Icelandic brunch that included some delicious, possibly not very Icelandic, brownies. Icelandic sweaters were on display (reminding me of the Reykjavik airport, where my family used to stock up on sweaters and Toblerone during our layovers to and from Germany), and a very nice lady provided VINGT Paris’ resident Icelander with some proper yarn to darn his heirloom sweater with. The day started with Rock in Reykjavik (1982), an award-winning documentary about the music scene coming out of Iceland, although the big shows were for screenings of Inni.
Journée Air d’Islande, produced by Sinny & Ooko and Air d’Islande, managed to encompass all the best exports from Iceland over the past 20 years: music, film, sweaters, brownies (sure, why not?) and, best of all, Icelanders. I think I’ll stick to Sigur Rós live, thanks, but Journée Air d’Islande definitely whetted my appetite for more culture Islandais.
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