JoelRoll
I watched this documentary out of curiosity after recently finding his music on Youtube, and enjoying most of it. This film is about him and his music, but to me they seem like separate entities. Let me put it this way, this movie doesn't do a well enough job showing how good his music is. While it does show that people are obsessed with him—fans singing along, his art being bought instantly—the film doesn't show why he is a genius.That said,I don't know if I appreciate Daniel Johnston more or less after watching this film. If I'm being honest, Johnston now seems to me like a much more disturbed man than a music genius. And if someone went into this film not having an appreciation for Johnston, they might feel the same way. He comes off as a tragic, mentally-ill person trying to be a musician (which he was), but he should have been painted more as a great musician held back from greatness.I agree with both types of reviews: those that praise him, and those that don't get the excitement.Other than some quips about the way Daniel Johnston is portrayed, this is a great documentary. The director was lucky to have access to so much of Daniel's life captured on film, so it was fun to watch the story chronologically.If you like Johnston, you'd be interested in this film. But I must say, it is required to listen to his music before viewing.
Jim Kobayashi
I watched the movie just now, and I got to admit the movie is quite interesting. But As people in the board have been discussing over and over, it is what we usually feel after watching movie, "Do people like DJ"Daniel Johnston"s music because he has a mentally illness?" My thought about this topic is Yes, they definitely do.First of all, I'm not quite a big fan of Lo-Fi music, but I think I have a open-mind to any sort of music and have a confidence to judge any music without slanted view. However, even considering those things, I still can't think his music is way better than the most of the lo-fi or folk-rock artists. and I totally agree with the opinion that "people like him because of his situation and Kurt Cobain's T-shirt." I'm not saying DJ doesn't has any musical talent or any sort because I believe he definitely has, what I want to say is there are much greater or more emotional artists out there in the world, and it is not fair or right that those artists doesn't get a spotlight and people like DJ got one, huge one. But I know music industry is always like this since it started in the first place, and the important thing is this film somehow made me realize it.However only I thing I hate about the movie and DJ himself, his "Art". I have no idea about Art and I know it's not right that people like me judge the topic by my own understanding. But I'm 100% sure his art is Bulls**t and everybody thought like I did. What was it? I would totally believe if people say some kids draw that "peace of art". Does the art suddenly gain artistic value if the artist who draw it has a mentally illness? Art and Music is very similar considering those ambiguous valuation standard, I figured it out that's the reason why I like and sometime hate both of them so much.By the way, like I said in the first the movie is simply good. You can enjoy the movie without any knowledge for lo-fi or folk rock music.
eddiez61
Many people choose to dismiss Daniel Johnston as a demented fool, a hack impostor, an exceptionally lucky freak - more an oddity than a genuine talent. This is not to be unexpected, but these labels only express the fear - the reflexive and irrational terror - that most people experience in the face of true originality. Too often people naively, impulsively, cruelly denigrate those things which most challenge or bewilder them.Daniel Johnston's art and music is certainly not commercial, slick, mainstream, or easy. It requires a definite but modest adjustment of the ordinary standards by which we judge creativity. This accommodation is reasonable and well deserved because Daniel doesn't operate and strive along the ordinary paths of creativity. He answers to his own very personal, arbitrary, special creative authority. And it's not that he's oblivious to the mainstream, the popular, the normal; it simply doesn't dominate him. So, naturally, his art is going to be a little more unrecognizable, a little more mysterious, and a lot more misunderstood. His psychiatric challenges have served him well as barricades to the "common" and "trite", and shepherded him into much greener, virgin, magical pastures. His lyrics, his metaphors, his themes, his obsessions and his terrors are so acutely, so authentically, so imaginatively expressed through such inspired rhymes and rhythms that the apparent lo-fi crudeness of his method is all the more compelling. His message, as much as any other profound artist's has ever been, is found equally in his style. This clunky, rambling, unpolished heap of piano tinklings, guitar thrashings, and plaintive croakings are the music of a sincere human heart seeking satisfaction. Alas, what alarms so many detractors may be his curious appearance and erratic behavior - the unfortunate downside of his condition. Witnessing such an intensely intimate examination of a fractured mind is a very rare privilege. There have been many starkly sober, or coldly clinical, and even overly melodramatic, sensationalistic investigations of mental illness put to film, but never one so absurdly entertaining. Is Daniel putting us all on, is this all just a grand devious hoax, I kept asking myself? How could a mind so gifted, so precise, so elegant at creating such outrageously poignant tunes be so tragically unreliable in every other way? The disconnect is enough to make me crazy...Then there's the issue of fame, of how fame dominates our culture (if not the whole world's) like a savage drug. Daniel's quest for and ultimate attainment of recognition for his gifts is both remarkable and disturbing. It is remarkable for the fact that Daniel himself began documenting his curious life and habits at an early age - video taping his odd creative style, his tumultuous relationship with his put-upon parents, and even staged fantastical dramas that often had him playing the role of his worried, nagging mother, complete with full house coat drag. His ambition is likewise unsettling, as he seems to have been entirely unconcerned with or even thrilled with any of his glaring shortcomings. Like the talentless and delusional victims that flock to that annual ritualistic bloodletting that is the auditions for "American Idol", Daniel at times seemed to be offering himself up as a sacrificial lamb, to be ridiculed and scorned, for the simple amusement of a smug, careless audience. It subtly reveals that there may be more than a hint of madness in those of us who so desperately desire fame, and equally in all the rest of us who so passionately worship it. Deny this fact at your own peril.Fortunately, thanks to the deft, sensitive skill of its director, this tale is neither an obsequious paean to an under appreciated talent, nor a bleak, nihilistic rant on the futility of man's vanity. Rather, it turns out to be a modest celebration of the triumph of the creative spirit - that force that drives artists to fully express their soul, more deeply connect with their fellow life voyagers, and unselfishly share those simple mysterious truths that we so easily overlook, forget, or deny. Daniel's songs are excavated from the deepest, most secret depths of his soul and emerge into the light of day as delicate, innocent bundles of magic, exploding into our psyches in fantastical color, form and sound. It's exhilarating to witness the birth and delivery of his remarkable creations. Even if it's in a dingy, cramped room of only 10 or 20 enlightened fans, the performances feel more like sacred oblations on behalf of the whole of humanity.This film is a modest declaration for us all to be more aware, more tolerant, more humane to those individuals among us who answer to rare, alien masters, even if these same artists are not always so careful with themselves. The simplicity, the honesty, the magic of Daniel Johnston's art and music is bittersweet proof that the world has not seen its last Van Gogh. These exceptional artists, like Daniel Johnston, have something significant, something essential, something beautiful for us all.
