Under African Skies (2012)

Artwork for Theatrical Release

Like my encounter with Paul Simon's quintessential album Graceland (1985), this film was a happy serendipitous moment of exaltation.

With a throbbing headache sidelining me from work, I came across this film in the movies section of the HuluPlus website, and decided that it would make a good soundtrack to an early afternoon nap.  Boy was I wrong, about the nap that is.

The film was phenomenal, even if it showcased was is brilliant and problematic about HuluPlus.

The film provides a thrilling and cinematographically gorgeous travail into the craft of music/lyric writing.  There is a palpable and unmistakable synergy between the music and the images that follow it, which makes for a very enjoyable time.

The melding of old footage from the original studio sessions is both inspiring and perfectly melded into the new crisp footage.  Technically speaking, very close to perfection.

It manages to do something that Martin Scorsese's seminal concert film The Last Waltz (1978) couldn't do, which is make the seamless transition from song to song, from interview to song.

For those that have the album, for those that lived the album and its tumults.  For those who need historical context, for those that might have judged the album and its singularity.  Watch this film, it is great in its execution, it is great in its simple but deep thematics.

I loved the album when I heard it.  As a matter of fact, I had discovered "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" and had loved it, before I knew Paul Simon and had loved it.

Without context an album, a song, a piece of art, floats in the ether, judged by nothing other than technical merit and symbolic breath.

Here, in Under African Skies, lies its context for the uninitiated, buy it and store it away for the oncoming zombie apocalypse, along with the album.

Just don't watch it on HuluPlus, unless you can't help it, their computer algorithm (I hope) picks the worst times to cut away to commercials.