Oscar© Chat, Part 2

The best part of my job is not seeing free movies.  It’s a nice perk, as is seeing those movie before their release date, and being able to wax effusive over them when they are good, or venting spleen for my wasted time when they are bad. No, the very best part of my job is, if I choose, knowing absolutely nothing about a film before I see it: not the slightest clue about plot, no expectations about cinematography or a particular performance.  And so it was with SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, a stranger-than-fiction story of Rodriguez, an anti-establishment recording artist who sang of protest, and whose career tanked in the United States shortly after starting it started in the early 1970s,  but had, without his knowledge, become a cultural icon in South Africa a few years later.

Rumors abounded about what had become of Rodriguez, and the film by Malik Bendjalloul, unfolds like a whipsmart mystery novel as if follows leads about what became of the mystery man in the sunglasses who sang of revolution and discontent with the status quo. The twist is astonishing, as is what the documentary, newly nominated for an Oscar© has to say about the nature of success, and what it truly means to be an artist.  If at all possible, see this doc without reading anything else, and certainly before listening to this interview with the filmmaker.