Alison Klayman

JAGGED: clear-eyed, but not that angry after all

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Photo caption: Alanis Morissette in JAGGED. Courtesy of HBO.

Jagged is a surprisingly addictive biodoc of singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, packed with Morissette’s own reflections. Jagged traces Morissette’s beginnings as a child prodigy and teen pop princess (big hair and all) to the point where she matured into an innovative songwriter and groundbreaking stadium act.

The deepest dive is appropriately on Morissette’s debut album Jagged Little Pill and the 18-month concert tour to support it. With sales of over 33 million, Jagged Little Pill is still the number one selling album by a woman. It’s amazing to reflect that Morissette was only 19-20 when writing the songs and only 20-21 on the tour.

Alanis Morissette in JAGGED. Courtesy of HBO.

Of course, Morissette’s breakthrough came with one of the bitterest of all breakup songs, You Oughta Know, raising the question of just how angry is she? Not at all, says Morissette, who notes that she released her anger in the writing of You Oughta Know and moved on.

Director Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry) takes us back to the 1994 media coverage, by male music writers, of Morissette as Angry Young Woman. Jagged takes advantage of lots of candid backstage/tour bus footage from the tour; and that Morissette is an even-tempered and playful person, not even temperamental, let alone raging.

In her years a teen pop singer, Morissette was allowed to tour the world without parental protection, which predictably made her vulnerable to exploitation by older men. It’s really worth watching Jagged to hear Morissette’s framing of how women publicly discuss sexual abuse years afterwards: “They weren’t silent. The culture wasn’t listening.”

Oddly, Morissette herself is unhappy with the documentary, calling it “salacious”. I thought that Klayton handled Morissette’s own words about her sexual abuse in a way that was the opposite of salacious. Klayton has Morissette present herself as insightful and well-grounded, which adds up to a flattering impression.

Jagged is streaming on HBO.

THE BRINK: craving relevance

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Steve Bannon in THE BRINK, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who founded Breitbart as a “platform for the alt right” and who encouraged Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House.

But even Trump is not shameless enough to keep Bannon around – as The Brink opens, Bannon has just been fired from the Trump Administration in the wake of the wake of the Charlottesville disgrace (“very fine people on both sides“).  Bannon is now embarking on a campaign of uniting the European populist Right around a common racist/ white supremicist/anti-immigration message.

Bannon, of course, is a genius at political messaging, and his major outcome was the once unthinkable re-emergence of public white supremicism – voicing those who lived under the dark, damp underside of rocks and logs with the other creepy-crawlies, and making them feel like they can walk the earth erect like other vertebrates.

Bannon is a major ham, and all too happy to let the world watch him in action.  Bannon, of all people, is savvy enough to understand that Klayman is hostile to his beliefs and career,yet he granted her intimate access.  His ego must not have allowed him to resist a movie about himself – or he learned from Trump that no publicity is bad publicity.

For her part, Alison Klayman (Ai Wei-wei: Never Sorry) is clever enough to let Bannon himself reveal his flaws.   As he thinks he is showing us his skills, he is also showing himself to be an attention-craving blowhard.  The horror isn’t that Bannon is some invincible evil mastermind but it’s in the masses (only glimpsed) that are so consumed by the fear and hatred that he peddles.

In the riveting opening sequence, Bannon describes how German technocrats designed the Birkenau death camp to be masterfully efficient.  The banality of evil is not an original thought, but Bannon’s insights are more than a little scary (and his appreciation of Nazi efficiency is uncomfortable).

I found The Brink to be irresistible and watched with fascination.  To those who have had their fill of the propagandists of the Right in Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes and Get Me Roger Stone (with Paul Manafort as bonus, I say that The Brink still offers insights – and more satisfaction.  Bannon wants his political skill to be validated, but The Brink reveals how pathetically he craves relevance.