Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing

Barbara Kopple is one of the great directors of direct cinema, best known for the Oscar-winning documentaries, Harlan County USA and American Dream, but she had wandered from stories of striking coal miners or meatpackers into celebrity profiles with Wild Man Blues, about Woody Allen, and a PBS series on The Hamptons. Teaming here with Cecilia Peck, she beautiful melds the two strands in a politically-astute personality piece with concert footage. The Chicks had become the best-selling female group of all time, when they opened in London around the time Bush was getting ready to invade Iraq, and lead singer Natalie Maines had the temerity to say she was ashamed the President was from Texas -- a bland enough assertion, one would think. But the country music “base” was mobilized into outrage -- boycotts and radio bans ensued, Bush-era bullying ran wild -- and basically the Chicks lost one career and had to recreate another. This saga of branding and re-branding is more engrossing than such a show business expose has any right to be. In the best tradition of cinema verite, there is no narration and no talking head interviews, just intimate access and authentic presentation. But the material works on multiple levels. There’s something about performers when they appear without varnish -- they seem to unearth their emotions in a volatile way (cf. Metallica: Some King of Monster.) So this is a group psychobiography, as well as a business and political story, and a concert film. I had no antecedent knowledge of the Dixie Chicks, but got a real sense of the community that supports and is supported by their performing. One is allowed to find them less than admirable, but the film certainly elicits some respect for the honesty of their endeavor. You can’t feel sorry for them, they obviously haven’t been shut up altogether, but their process of reinvention is rather inspiring, and oh-so-American. I am no longer, if I ever was, a knowledgeable fan of popular music, but lately there has been a striking succession of distinguished directors making notable films about contemporary performers, from Martin Scorsese on Bob Dylan in No Direction Home to Jonathan Demme on Neil Young: Heart of Gold and Michel Gondry on Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, to Barbara Kopple on the Dixie Chicks. All are well worth seeing, whether you’re partial to the artists portrayed or not. (2006, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-77)