Joni Mitchell - Le spleen et la colère

As "Joni Mitchell: Lady Blue" (2022 release from Canada; 53 min) opens, we are introduced to the New York music scene of the mid-60s, as a young Joni Mitchell, just arriving from Canada, tries to find a toehold. In a major breakthrough, Judy Collins records a cover of Joni's "Both Sides Now". At this point we are 5 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from documentarians Julia Kuperberg and Clara Kuperberg ("Mary Pickford A Blessing and A Curse"). Here they look back on Joni Mitchell's glorious career as one of the finest singer-songwriters of her generation. The problems with this documentary are significant: what is covered is not covered well, some of it even incorrectly. Even worse is what is NOT in this documentary, and it's a LOT. It really makes me wonder who the intended audience is for this hurried documentary: for casual fans of Joni Mitchell, or for die-hard fans of her? Either way, this documentary is likely going to leave you unsatisfied and make you wonder how or why anyone could think that making such a short and at times incorrect documentary would satisfy anyone. Finally, as to the title showing here on IMDb "Joni Mitchell - Le spleen et la colère", I didn't see it anywhere and per the opening credits of the documentary, this is simply called "Joni Mitchell Lady Blue".

I had never heard of this documentary until a few days ago it was recommended to me by Amazon Prime and I took a flyer on it. I shouldn't have. Whether you are a casual Joni Mitchell fan or a die hard fan, I cannot recommend this documentary in good conscience to anyone. By all means, AVOID.

Love, love, love the music of Joni Mitchell, but this documentary was strange and poorly done. The quality of the filming was so low that I kept wondering if this was done 20+ years ago.

While I enjoyed her discussions of her thinking and writing process, I wanted to hear more from others about her. It seemed whitewashed to keep out any negative things. Did she take drugs? Why on earth did she smoke?

I wanted to hear more about her memories of people she collaborated with. Greatest joys. Favorite songs. Regrets. Her later life. One hour was not enough to tell this story.

It would have been nice to hear more of her performances. Lastly, the narration felt really odd and out of place.

For big fans like myself there was nothing new, except that "Song to a Seagull" was a cover of an early Clapton song ... which it isn't of course. That's a weird blunder to include in an already crammed documentary.

For not so big fans like my wife it painted a full picture of the artist and person, so that we could reflect "from both sides" afterwards.

The (female) directors did well in letting JM reveal what a female artist has to struggle through, like not being allowed to go to Woodstock because of a TV show and then see CSNY being flewn over to be in the same program. Or how she bailed out of a second marriage when haunted by the images of her frustrated musical grandmothers. Or how giving away her daughter is a stain on her image and a personal trauma, while many male artists have abandoned their children with much more ease.

They could have left in at least one whole song, like Little Green, or one whole performance on stage so as to show, not tell, what a great composer and performer she was.

Mostly one wonders what the point is of reducing such a career to one hour. And how on earth you would still and falsely credit a man for the greatest female songwriter of all time - and you could drop the adjective.

"...And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them." No, no, no - this is not worthy the subject. It's really not Joni Mitchell's style to throw together a bunch of images and moving pictures and think it will make an interesting documentary. For example, take this part about sus chords - suspended chords. I suspect that not everyone watching was sure what exactly it was about. Like how they help to add color and movement to chord progressions. Instead, we get a lot of available jaded replays that we could put together ourselves. If that would make sense. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot".

I really enjoyed this; it was the music I grew up with. The issue I have is that several times we'd see a clip of an early, or even a first public performance of one of her songs, but after the opening line, we'd switch to a later performance that couldn't have the resonance of that first performance.

Other than that, it was a treat to see interviews with David Crosby, with Graham Nash, and with Judy Collins, and of course, with Joni Mitchell herself. She remains a deeply thoughtful and interesting person, and certainly a major talent.

I just wish the documentary had been better, and had shown us some actual historic performances.