The decision to document the journey of a little known popular American band in 2000 on their hopeful way to superstardom seemingly paid off. Sam Jones, as a first time Director seems to observe well what is going on in the band 'Wilco's development of their new album in which they want released by Time-Warner, but that is all he does, observe. The films seems too convoluted with footage of the band playing music whether in a recording studio, live or watching front man Jeff Tweedy singing solo that becomes painstakingly boring and irrelevant to the story. The observation looks nice in black and white film, and there seems to be a lot of money gone into the visual of the film with apparent B-crews and good camera with extensive amounts of stock allowing them to just keep shooting what is going on around them. Yet it has the feel of a very low budget film and due to it's black and white grain effect and appearance of the band, it was hard to place the time it was set, seemingly early nineties (the music and attitude suiting progressive bands like Nirvana in the early nineties) yet it was filmed in 200/01. Watching and understanding the band as a group of extremely talented musicians who have been given money to make the album on their own with a view to release their record and hit the big time, the film starts off with high spirits from all involved. But predictably, problems began to occur, namely with Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett who had major creative differences. One of the most pleasing piece of documentary film making observed the said two have a disagreement with a mix of a record and the air of exhaustion and frustration begins to show at the seams as the camera keeps rolling from afar and their conversation is barely audible over the playing music which is extremely interesting to watch and try to understand. As more music plays, the film appears to go into music video mode for the band around a whole song, so much in fact that you start to become distracted when the music is playing that you don't listen to what is being said in the narration. You would miss the apparent influence 9/11 had on Tweedy and his songs because of this, and it was something the Director wanted to make clear in portraying Tweedy. But saying this, Sam Jones never tries to get into the personal lives of any of the band members, it is all professional (apart from one scene with Tweedy and his family going to eat). When news hits that the bands album has been refused a release as it stands, there is no fuss made which is strange to view. It plays out like an every day event but it is almost unbelievable that they didn't get a release which could be because the first half of the film was so pro- Wilco and possible propaganda for the band making you believe that they were the next best thing. The introduction of a new player to take over Jay Bennett's departure (O'Rourke) again seems to be misdirected and not shown in its utmost importance to the bands eventual success and ironic redemption by being signed by a Time-Warner owned record company. Had Sam Jones concentrated more on the goings on with each band member and the importance of their actions, rather than flooding the film full off music and gig footage, the documentary could have followed a nice narrative that wasn't distracting with relevance into each of the band members actions and how they solved their problems to realise their ambitions.
