3/5 stars

Allen Ginsberg said that Arthur Russell’s fashion sense in the early sixties was a cross between Mongolian and military garb.  Ginsberg, whose Buddhism informed much of his art, would become neighbours with Russell, and observed Russell’s reputed transcendental method of playing music.  We get to judge whether or not Ginsberg was right.  Director Matt Wolf is careful to approach the many dimensions of Russell’s personality and music with care and consideration.

This is not a film made to turn you into a Russell acolyte.  Successful moments in the film include Wolf’s sensible and inventive creations of mock-stock footage from the era by using dated technology to record his friends posing at Russell and his peers.  Floating in an echoey ethereal haze, Russell’s sound charmed gay discos and the New York avant-garde after he moved there from San Francisco.  His death in the early nineties from AIDs removes the veil once again from our impression of the era and the untold tragedies of scores of other men and women who perished in the wake of the epidemic.

Russell is a character for those of us who are interested in those worn and ragged experimenters and for those willing to lend a sympathetic ear to the story of a young Iowan finding his sound in the urban sprawl.  Although you would be in just as good a position if you closed your eyes; his melodies are exquisite.

Lenhardt Stevens