"If you don’t know you’re standing next to genius…" The last few music documentaries took the brave tact of being less than reverential in approach with Montage of Heck, Beware of Mr. Baker, and 20,000 Days On Earth being warts ‘n all explorations of Kurt Cobain, Ginger Baker and Nick Cave respectively and were all the better for it. But this is another love-in, another singer/songwriter-can-do-no-wrong.
For a documentary about a man who allegedly committed suicide by stabbing himself twice in the heart, this is far too nice. Detailed but Disney. Elliott Smith’s prickly personality, depression, alcoholism and drug dependency are largely sidestepped in Nickolas Dylan Rossi’s reverential Heaven Adores You.
Opening with footage of an interview conducted after his unlikely appearance at the Oscars, he says "I’m the wrong kind of person to be big and famous." A friend then states that scooping the Oscar for Miss Misery from Good Will Hunting was "the worst thing that could have happened." And so Nickolas Dylan Rossi goes about putting together the pieces of this unlikely star.
There are photos of his childhood in Texas, with a sister and a former buddy pitching in to talk about the shy, introspective Smith feeling his way into music. Trouble with his stepfather leads to a flight to Portland where he comes into his own, forming bands Stranger Than Fiction, Harum Scarum and Heatmiser. It’s in this exploration of the Portland scene that Heaven Adores You warrants its admittance price. Looking like a bastion of creativity and sonic wizardry in the vein of Seattle in the early nineties, Rossi paints the city as a vibrant scene. The visuals work too with Smith’s music accompanying every scene; an industrial Portland or New York would be backdrop for the ever-present soundtrack.
But it’s just too soft and unwilling to get under the fingernails. A friend offers that he "wasn’t always easy to be friends with," which doesn’t get near Smith’s reputation for being irritable. The sticky subject of drug use is described limply as there being "substance involved," and he was into "heavier stuff." It doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty of the breakup of Heatmiser or with his then girlfriend (who appears here), both coming across as amicable splits.
Far too soft for its own good and, try as it might, the genius of Elliott Smith just doesn’t come across.
