Doc wraps sisterhood, womanhood, the recording process, and hot issue politics all into one.
She’s made a career out of portraying the common man as a working class hero, but Barbara Kopple probably had no clue what would come about from following three southerner entertainers who had the country music industry in their back pockets and nothing more to prove. Shut Up & Sing demonstrates that controversy might not sell more albums and/or concert tickets, but it sure makes the career path a lot more memorable. The Weinstein Co. pick-up’s timely release should prove to be a popular item especially during the Dixie Chicks’ current tour and during a massive drop in public opinion ratings for the current U.S president.
Apparently there are plenty of folk that don’t care too much for freedom of speech and viewers are almost reminded of this sad fact on an annual basis – pull out some stock footage showing good Americans burning Beatles records and voila. She’s got a beautiful voice and an opinionated one at that, and the moment when Natalie Maines (the center piece of the trio) was caught off guard, she and the doc film had no clue what kind of storm would hit them. Thank god for docu fly-on-the-wall styled filmmaking.
Demonstrating that intuition is an important part of picking subject matters to document, Kopple and Cecilia Peck veer this into a direction that is not the thought-provoking political doc that you’d think that the trailer builds it up to be, but rather, this is a portrait of three strong-minded women who suffer and don’t shelter themselves away from sticking to their guns. Usually it takes time for a doc to find its form, but it certainly helps when the subjects at hand are at as outspoken as these three. The three-year shooting process with frequent visits in between managerial meetings, recording sessions and child delivery is not a full out piece on free speech, but when musicians get angry it makes for easy song writing, it also makes for good drama.
Kopple and peck often play with the timeline of recorded events, reaching into the past to demonstrate the risk involved in the gambles the trio takes in their bounce back return. It’s interesting to witness how the members of the band and surrounding the band have this in their daily psychosis. There is nothing original about the format nor this kind of material, but you get the impression that women filmmakers and women singer/songwriters make for a good team – the rawness and the weight that every step taken needs to be fully thought out makes the new tour and new album and finally the doc, that much more triumphant. The doc comes across like a thank you card for the group’s fan but for those who’ve no clue what a Dixie Chick was prior to will find that there is much more to being a musician than collecting and cashing in royalty checks.