Sois là pour m'aimer - La tragique vie du chanteur folk Townes van Zandt

I was lucky enough to view this film at the Toronto Film Festival. As a longtime, and pretty rabid Townes Van Zandt fan, I was very impressed with the film. Director Margaret Brown did a fantastic job. Her film showed the tragedy, humor and beauty that made up Townes. I had a chance to talk to her briefly after the screening, and you could tell that this was really a labor of love. The interviews in this seem like a who's who of singer/songwriter music, featuring Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Guy Clark and many more. Hopefully it will find some sort of distribution on DVD. It is the type of film that deserves to be seen. Anyone who considers themselves a music fan should take any opportunity they have to see this film.

If you aren't absolutely amazed by Townes' songwriting, finger picking, and singing, all you have to do is pick up a guitar to realize how difficult it is to do what he's doing. He's actually doing three or four things at once: Plucking a bass line with his thumb, a melody with his remaining fingers, and to top it all off, he sings absolutely hauntingly over this intricate accompaniment.

When Kristofferson called Townes a "songwriter's songwriter," this is made even truer by the fact that most of his biggest fans are musicians, because of his dedication and the perfection he achieves in his songs. It is truly songwriting rocket science. After I discovered Townes, I hardly ever strummed my guitar anymore, but rather try to keep it mostly fingerstyle.

Townes' greatness stemmed from what is the lifeblood of most all great musicians: persistence and dedication (and drugs), at least to his art, if not to the business side of things. Like he said; "You've got to lock yourself in your apartment, take the phone off the hook, and listen to Lightnin' Hopkins for two weeks."

Even if you're not a fan of documentaries, hell, even if you're not a fan of folk/country, Be Here To Love Me is a beautiful and well-directed story of the life of singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt. More than just a movie for hardcore fans of the genre and the artist, the impeccable visual style of the movie keeps the average movie-goer enthralled within it's heartfelt and hilarious interviews of friends, family, and musical contemporaries give dialogue almost too good for a movie.

But then you're reminded that it's a documentary; it's fairly easy to forget. The only narration is the actual audio, be it phone calls (such as in the amazing opening sequence to "At My Window"), home movies, live performances, or the music itself. The camera pans across montages of midwest scenes: old men in the old mens' bars, truck driving, wandering through the desert, and so many others that play like one gorgeous, intermittent music video. Some of the dialogue is unforgettable, be it Townes discussing his addiction to airplane glue, Guy Clark laughing at him hitting on his wife, or his own mother expressing sorrow for exposing him to shock treatments early in his life.

The overall pace of the movie becomes disrupted near the last 20-30 minutes, as the overall flow of themes in Townes' life unfold less and less precisely and with as much organization as the beginning, but that's basically the only flaw to an otherwise brilliant documentary.

Not knowing much about Townes as a person, I can say that this movie helped me fall in love with his music and find new respect for the genre. I recommend it to anyone who loves this man, loves these kinds of quirky stories, loves country/folk, or... well, I recommend it to anyone!

I can say without a doubt, that Townes Van Zandt is simply best American songwriter of the past century. He owes a lot to classic bluesmen like Lightnin Hopkins and country balladeers like Hank Williams, but for my money, he's the greatest. He has an economy of words and a poetry that none of his competition comes close to. Many people would site Dylan as the greatest, but I think Townes blows him out of the water. There is a rawness, and realness to Townes that you very rarely hear in music, period. You can feel the pain and longing that haunted this man, also the genius poet at work and occaissonally goofy fun lover in all his songs. I discovered Townes thanks to this movie, so I feel indebted to it for introducing me to some of the best music I've ever heard.

The life and times of songwriter Townes Van Zandt told through clips, interviews and his music.

I always knew the name but never had any idea what he wrote. The one song you're probably most likely to know is Poncho and Lefty which was a hit for Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson And Merle Haggard. This documentary filled me in, to some degree, on the man and his music, but it never really made me understand the man any more than I did before. The film certainly didn't turn me into a fan of his. Townes was an amazing songwriter who said his songs were "mostly sad and the rest are hopeless". He wrote, performed and then drank and did drugs in order to deal with his personal demons. I'm really not to sure what those demons were, they just were sort of there, or so it seems from the movie. The movie isn't clear about many details in Townes life, its really just a portrait of the man as a person you might meet on the street, it doesn't really give you any sense of what he did (other than write songs) or when he did it. He had some kids and he had some wives, but there isn't really any attempt to sort that out, nor is there any attempt to give you any sense of what he did other than write songs (this is not a movie to see if you want dates and places) Its a good movie. Its not a great one. It does give you a sense of who this person was as if he were a random person, but it doesn't really tell us why he is so important and so well loved. For me its a bunch of people telling his story and saying he's great, but not explaining why. I enjoyed it, but I really wish I knew more about him other than he wrote songs.