John Mellencamp: It's About You

Details

John Mellencamp: It's About You
Directed by Kurt Markus and Ian Markus
MPI Media Group
Opens January 4, IFC Center

Related Content

• 'Robert Johnson at 100'
  February 22, 2012
• This Week In The Voice: Musical New Year's Resolutions, Jonathan Batiste Goes Underground, And The Bunker Turns Nine
  January 4, 2012
• Todd Rundgren
  June 29, 2011
• 'Time to Get Ill' with Dixon
  August 24, 2011
• Q&A: Michael Cumella Talks Old Records And His "Antique Phonograph Music Program"
  July 29, 2011

More About

• John Mellencamp
• Kurt Markus
• Robert Johnson

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

John Mellencamp comes across as the kind of anti-establishment millionaire who believes in artistic freedom but knows things are better done his own way, who likes it ragged but also just so. Which, considering his track record, is eminently fair, but it's enough to give a genuine free spirit fits. Interested in self-documentation but drawn to unconventionality, he recruits photographer (and non-filmmaker) Kurt Markus to chronicle his 2009 concert tour and No Better Than This recording sessions as a rough-hewn work of independent art. "This film should be about you," Mellencamp insists, denying the inherent hypocrisy of his charge and evidently persuading Markus that he's sincere. The result is an amateurish travelogue that feels like a botched assignment, halfheartedly self-regarding and resentfully remote from the object of our fascination. The footage often looks great, captured as it was on Super 8 stock that abstracts visible light sources and gives skin an indefinite warmth. And the music, recorded on analog equipment at historic locations like Sun Studios and Robert Johnson's hotel room, turned out to be Mellencamp's strongest in decades. But Kurt's monotonous, diaristic voiceover drowns the film in armchair philosophizing, bloodless "this is so kickass" editorializing, and sarcastic swipes at his rock-star employer. Such failures to ingratiate only make Mellencamp's expertly calibrated folksiness more appealing, which might have been the plan all along.