Australian musician Courtney Barnett has garnered awards and fans around the world. Yet she is remarkably publicity-shy and refreshingly lacking in ‘muso’ ego.
Her long-time music video collaborator, Danny Cohen, decided in 2018 to start following Barnett around with a 16 mm camera, capturing her on stage, backstage, on tour, and in private moments. He also suggested that she begin keeping an audio diary by simply chatting into an old analogue dictaphone. Three years of this material has finally been put together. Anonymous Club is the resulting feature documentary.
Barnett’s words are at the core of this work, both in terms of her songs, and the raw, vulnerable diary that she speaks. Cohen has captured a woman with self-insight, and with the words to express the almost existential sadness that comes upon most of us at some time. Interestingly, despite often speaking of sadness, self-doubt, anxiety, and so forth, Barnett never comes across as self-pitying. She is also a woman grateful for her blessings, and very aware that, “this too will pass”.
Anonymous Club is not the typical music documentary. We are certainly shown performances, rehearsals, recording sessions; yet the focus remains much more Barnett herself. In following her diary, and her daily life, it is as if we are travelling the song-writing journey with her. This is an artist completely without artifice, struggling, like most of us, to make sense of life, herself, and her place in the world. Cohen’s camera allows us to bear witness to that, and to experience those doubts along with her. Gradually Barnett begins talking more directly to Cohen behind his camera, almost narrating her own life. Some of her moments of insight are truly moving.
As a feature, it has its issues. It lacks a sense of spine. Cohen has gone for a gentle unfolding, which is delightful for the most part, but needed to be embedded in a more solid structure. This work could have been shorter, and tighter, without losing the beautiful languid pace which is its hallmark.
Australia is producing some great documentaries lately: features which deal with fascinating and eclectic subject-matter, and do so in ways which stretch and refresh the genre.
Anonymous Club is one more addition to that stable. And a very worth one at that.
Anonymous Club opens on March 17th.
There will be a special screening this evening, March 11th at Palace Nova Eastend, followed by a Q & A with both Danny Cohen and Courtney Barnett. Click here for tickets.
Click here for the official website.
A beautiful and surprising feature 4 stars
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