Sgt_Pepper1102

I can't say I'm a fan of country music, but I was really interested in knowing more about this scene. I wasn't familiar with most musicians, I only knew Townes Van Zandt who really, for me, was the best part of the documentary. The other musicians are quite talented, but their lyrics are all about whiskey, beer and wine and having a good time in Texas, which compared to Van Zandt's lyrics, they are just too weak, too shallow. It was funny to see Townes acting all silly and then seeing him play "Waitin' around to die" with such passion and making his neighbor cry. It was disappointing that the documentary didn't show any more footage of him or something deeper about this whole music scene and its roots or context. Instead, it even shows a sequence like a Jack Daniel's commercial and a long pre-show preparation which are almost equal to the time given to Townes, so it kind of feels like an insult. Nearly by the end, David Allan Coe makes the documentary more interesting and emotional, but overall, I think it's almost like a documentary you could just listen to instead of watch.

It starts very well, with very realistic performances, interesting situations and clever dialogues. The archive footage most of the time blends fine with the fiction and you almost feel it's all real. However, the texts on the screen soon become very annoying and redundant, they make the film very slow and add an over dramatic narrative that becomes too discursive and propagandist. The film turns into some kind of documentary and loses its early approach. It even includes a voice over that to me felt completely out of place. Another thing that bothered me was the hysterical officials yelling and arguing, those scenes were explanatory and silly. If the film would have maintained the direction of the first scenes and kept a better pace it would be a masterpiece. I say you have to be in a good mood to watch this film because it's very depressing, there's no hope, it ends up as a complete a psychological horror film.

It's disappointing how a great story is told in such an unfocused and weak way. There's no clear point of view, no character drives the story and the boy who seems to be the protagonist has no objective. I think the weakest part of the film is the poor casting of the protagonist since he never shows any emotion at all, not even when he asks about things he's supposed to care about and he just wanders around observing everything for no reason, doing absolutely nothing. The dialogues are also very bad, like when the boy and Ignas talk about getting land for free and out of nowhere bring out believing in God. The most emotional scenes which are between father and son, suffer from over exposition, old secret stories that are triggered out of nothing and what's worse, don't change anything in the boy. This is a shame because the father (Arvydas Dapsys) delivers a great performance. The only aspects of the film that made me watch it through were the cinematography, the locations and the rest of the characters which are really superb.