Pavement documentary makes us miss hagiographic biopics

Hagiographic and rhetorical documentaries that portray world music icons as icons of music to be venerated make little sense and are not liked by almost anyone. Director Alex Ross Perry deserves credit for showing us the opposite end of the spectrum: unless you are a fan of the band. Pavement at the level of sectarian worship, “Pavements” is a vision that turns into a punishment.

Two hours of music documentary are a lot to digest, even to tell the story of the ironically self-proclaimed “most important and influential band in the world”. Even and especially if we give up all the narrative and commentary equipment that this type of project requires by default: a linear temporal development in telling the musical evolution of the band, interspersed with critical commentary by journalists and musicologists, the testimonies of colleagues and family members. The best projects in this sense combine the need to introduce the public who does not know the subject of the documentary and those who are very prepared and hope to glean some more information about it.

It was to be expected: as a convinced admirer of the band and its deliberately indie and counter-current approach, the director of Her Smell plans a unique approach to the band’s story, aimed precisely at to also restore in the form of a documentary the uniqueness of the musical subject it tells.

Pavement told between history and inside jokes

On paper “Pavements” traces the history of one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the 90s, never really broke out into the mainstreamlargely at the behest of its frontman, the rough and elusive Stephen Malkmus. In practice, however, it is a mishmash of archival footage, reconstructions of the band’s crucial turning points (the first breakup, the infamous Lollapalooza performance, the two reunions in recent years) and meta-narratives of other projects that have attempted to tell this same story.

The doc opens with the band’s rehearsals in preparation for their return to the scene after a 12-year hiatus, in 2022. The band’s rehearsals are interspersed with those of the cast of the off-Broadway musical “Slanted! Enchanted!”, which brings together the most famous songs of the Pavements, singing and choreographing them in a tuneful, involved, coordinated way; that is, the complete opposite of the approach of the group that wrote them.

There is also the behind the scenes of a temporary and celebratory exhibition of the history of the band entitled “Pavements 33-22” at the Whitney Museum. Finally, there is also a behind the scenes look at a rhetorical and Oscar-chasing biopic, starring Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as Stephen Malkmus. A similarity so striking in physicality and attitude that it disturbs the onlookers is remarked over and over again. You have never heard of this latest project because it is one of the many inside jokes, of the many mockeries of a band that of mocking the music scene and the “serious” and “backcombed” approach of their contemporary rock bands has formed the backbone of their public identity.

“Pavements” tells the story of Pavement only to those who already know them

Here lies the real problem with “Pavements”. On social media, someone mocked a spectator caught googling information about the band during the screening at the Venice Film Festival, where the film was presented in the Orizzonti section. This is an indicative measure of both the snobbery of the audience for whom this operation is designed, and of how “Pavements” really isn’t able to tell the band’s story to those who don’t already know them inside out.

Indeed, the documentary misses a splendid opportunity to critically reflect on where the rebellion against the mainstream recording system, fame and interviews ends and where a pose begins, a not seeing as in the years Pavement have made the rounds as “the band to quote to sound smart”. Noah Baumbach, screenwriter, director and husband of Greta Gerwig, says this, commenting on the line from the film Barbie in which Malkmus and company are mentioned.

Since the years in which they resisted the attempt to make them mainstream and internationally famous**, the band members have since aged.** They still wear flannel shirts, they still sell out live houses filled with those who were part of the band’s “cult”, whose memory is jealously guarded among those who dictate what is cool and what is not to listen to. Both those on and under the stage have some white hair.

All my sympathy for the Googler to my own projection: Perry gets really carried away, mixing reality and mockery so markedly that it makes you want to fact-check everything. You can’t be sure about anything that is said unless you already know which nonsense is real and which plausible events are nonsense packaged to make those who have the tools to do so laugh. The only message that Pavements sends loud and clear is that if you don’t already know by heart what he’s about to tell you, if you didn’t listen to the band’s songs back then or now, then you’re the loser.

An approach that risks becoming dangerously a pose when, in fact, the summer blockbuster of a studio like Warner Bros dedicated to the doll expression of capitalism in the world of toys thinks that even for the general public the name of your band is evocative enough to get that concept across: Pavement as cool, niche, detached music, a joke that you either get or you’re out. It doesn’t matter whether you listen to them or not, the message is clear.

“Pavements” does a great job of explaining this “you’re either one of us or you’re not” thing, while completely failing to explain why, musically speaking, the band has so jealously guarded its independence, to preserve what. What Pavement’s music touches in the hearts and minds of their most passionate fans remains a mystery, making that genuinely moved fan who cries at the announcement of the reunion look like a snob and an unpleasant person. “Pavements” is the sum of a small circle that talks to itself about what it already knows, without communicating with the outside world. It is also the embodiment of the eternal dilemma of what has the potential to speak to a wider audience but is worried (rightly) about losing its essence and specificity in reaching it.

A good experimental and daring documentary in form could have been the right compromise to tell everyone about Pavement, preserving and paying homage to their specificity. “Pavements” by Alex Ross Perry is not exactly that doc.