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Streaming Joni Mitchell – Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story Online.
Movie Title: Joni Mitchell – Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story Joni Mitchell – Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Joni Mitchell – Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story |
This is a sensitive and beautifully made documentary that I recommend highly.
Joni is one of my favorite musicians. I have been listening to her on a regular basis for over 30 years. As a result, my expectations for this kind of film were high, and overall I was pleased with what I saw.
By far the most appealling part of this documentatary is the wonderful archival footage of a young Joni doing a number of her great early songs. This material simply shimmers with an almost other worldly glow. The retelling of the writing of her song Woodstock all but had me in tears, it was so moving and evocative.
The commentary by people who knew her well, such as David Crosby, Graham Nash, David Geffin, and others, is thoughtful and very enlightening. Recent footage from an interview with Joni herself is also very engaging.
Ultimately I would like to read a really long, really thorough biography that would explain all the complicated details that make up this extraordinary woman’s life. There just wasn’t enough room to dig into some of the most interesting transitions in her complicated life in this beautifully made, two hour long film. I still hunger for more information.
Joni is such an intelligent woman, and many of the decisions in her later life would make interesting material for a more in depth exploration. Her relationship to jazz, the development of breakthrough albums such as Hejira and Mingus, her personal thoughts on other musicians, etc. All of this would be interesting to read about in more depth.
But one needs to recoginize the limitations of the genre. You can only do so much in a documentary film. And certainly one understands why there was so much focus on her early career, given the almost transcendent power of the early archival footage. The early Joni was a being from another planet, or some parallel idealized universe, almost impossibly beautiful and talented. Given the nature of this early footage, it is easy to forget that she became more interesting as she grew older.
Overally, this is excellent work, a must see for any one who really loves Joni’s work and wants to know more about her.
(If one gives every film that one really likes 5 stars, then how can you highlight those truly stellar films that all but change our lives. This is a great film, but I can only bring myself to give it 4 stars. It’s very good, but it’s not a Bergman or Fellini film.)
This DVD chronicles the life, loves and career of Joni Mitchell. She was very strong-willed, battling childhood polio and later teaching herself to play guitar. That combination of determination and talent helped her succeed in the male dominated world of folk music. To paraphrase her, she wanted to combine the melodicism of the big band era with the lyricism of Bob Dylan in the songs she wrote. She soon went from the coffee houses of Greenwich Village to Carnegie Hall. Ever the wandering spirit, she moved from New York to Laurel Canyon, LA, where she met and fell in love with Graham Nash. During that period, when they were living together, Graham wrote “Our House” and Joni wrote the album “Ladies Of The Canyon.” That album included the official anthem to the sixties’ most famous music festival, “Woodstock.” Ironically, Joni was supposed to play at Woodstock, but her manager talked her out of it at the last minute.
The DVD goes on to chronicle Joni’s musical journeys into pop (”You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio”) rock and roll (”Raised On Robbery”) and jazz (”Mingus”), a superb album that was savaged by the critics and ignored by the record buying public. Joni continued to release many fine albums throughout the eighties and nineties. Joni finally won a Grammy in 1996, when “Turbulent Indigo” won for best pop album. Unlike other music veterans who won Grammies late in their careers, Joni’s win did not translate into huge records sales and lots of radio airplay. Nevertheless, this multi-talented artist continues to make great music. The DVD includes snippets of songs performed in various concerts throughout her entire career. A bonus section features four songs, taken from her 1998 video “Painting With Words And Music,” in their entirety. The songs are “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Amelia,” “Hejira” and “Woodstock.”
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