An admission from Elliott Smith that “I’m the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous…” begins Nickolas Rossi’s documentary Heaven Adores You. And nothing for the remaining 100-odd minutes comes close to explaining the cult singer-songwriter with such clarity.
From Steve the class clown to the morose and brilliant artist, Heaven Adores You chronologically charts the life and downfall of Smith with abject sentimentality. Speeding through the chubby baby photos, Rossi explores Elliott’s early bands Stranger Than Fiction and Heatmiser, before focusing on his acclaimed solo career. And while the trivia revealed during the Either/Or, XO and Figure 8 years is interesting, the film struggles to distil any real meaning beyond paying tribute.
This is its fatal flaw as a documentary, however as a nerdy indulgence, it’s touching, if not slightly exhaustive. Debutants to Smith’s canon will struggle to maintain interest due to the attention paid to the minor details of Smith’s life, but it has enough well-resourced anecdotes to keep diehard fans happy; from moments with his ex-girlfriend Joanna Bolme and ex-manager Margaret Mittleman, to the bar flies he drank beside every night.
Rare interviews with radio stations like KCRW are interspersed with selected songs from Elliott’s career and the archival live recordings are mesmerising. But his perpetual coyness in interview does become grating, he’s not a charismatic artist outside his work so building a docomentary around him is made harder; he’s curious but his awkwardness when discussing his work is palpable.
And while the use of sporadic visuals of small-town and desolate America are symbolicly suggestive at first, there are a lot of moments where it feels like Rossi just needed stock footage to act as a visual aid to Elliott’s songs like a youtube upload and it does take away from the poignancy of his music. It’s this technical amatuerism and an inability to ask the hard questions of those in the film that makes this one for the fansites.
BY CHRISTOPHER LEWIS
