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Caught someplace between a film and a collection, “Willie Nelson & Family” doubles down on the historical past and mythology of its namesake to stretch the latter into what would have been higher served as the previous. Honest, introspective, but not often revelatory, the anthology typically errors the great for the important, and whereas it succeeds in explaining Willie Nelson to its viewers, that’s about all it does. For followers of the Red Headed Stranger, that is likely to be sufficient, however anybody trying to discover Willie’s place within the intersection of nation music, popular culture, and the sociopolitical cloth of 20th America is likely to be upset.
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Directors Thom Zimny and Oren Moverman don’t do the collection any favors with the primary episode, which struggles to search out its voice between a linear telling of Willie’s previous and a leap forward to his mainstream success in 1975. It’s a difficulty the piece doesn’t resolve till the third hour or so, which claws by means of a number of returns into Willie’s childhood inside an in any other case direct unspooling of the nation music star’s rise from disc jockey, to aspiring songwriter, to struggling tour act, to business legend. And whereas these detours have a thematic connection (all of them construct on Willie’s deep connection to his household), it too typically drags the bigger affair down.
Nowhere is that this disparity extra evident than in Episode 3, the place it exhibits Willie getting comfy sufficient in his personal pores and skin to turn out to be the pot-smoking, bandana-wearing, good-timin’ son-of-a-bitch that made him one thing greater than well-known: related. It’s a enjoyable stretch for “Willie Nelson & Family” and is a payoff for the exhaustive (and at instances, exhausting) origin story. And whereas the earlier two episodes present some much-needed context about his struggles within the extra inflexible Nashville system, one will get the sense that if the tempo of this third episode was maintained all through, this all may need been a tighter and tidier affair.
Even so, what makes it one thing of a slog at instances can be one of many collection’ strongest options: its refusal to mythologize its topic. Interviews and voiceover from Willie are the spine of the bigger narrative, and the person by no means makes excuses for his dangerous selections or habits over time. He’s open about his troubles with alcohol, monetary planning, his well being, and his relationships, and Zimny and Moverman must be recommended for conserving this from straying off into easy hagiography.
Yet, explorations into the contradictions that pop up by means of all of this (and are certainly fascinating) are few and much between. Willie is a person hooked on the street, but he additionally values the bonds of household and friendship above all else: a tough factor to do from a tour bus. Yet, the most important miss of the collection is rooted in what’s the reverse of contradiction, and that’s Willie’s rise to stardom in an period when nation/western music achieved mainstream success.
Episode 3 clears out a while to clarify how Willie and Waylon Jennings shook up the nation music panorama with their growth of the “Outlaw” subgenre, and Episode 4 tracks his crossover into mainstream success with the ‘Stardust’ album. Yet how all of this matches into the explosion of the broader business vis a vis Nineteen Seventies “Country Pop” (Dolly Parton, John Denver, Kenny Rogers) stays unexamined. And whereas it’s heart-warming to suppose that Willie lastly broke by means of solely when he grew out his hair and began dwelling his greatest marijuana-laced life, the shortage of contextualization inside this broader setting (save one transient portion decrying the awful Nineteen Eighties) is a blind spot.
This is humorous as a result of lots of the folks on the fringes on this part of the story seem on digicam to sing the praises of Willie, and provides the collection greater than sufficient bona fides. Besides Dolly, the episodes additionally boast testimonials from Rosanne Cash, Kenny Chesney, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Wynton Marsalis, Shelby Lynn, and a rating of others. The admiration they’ve for Willie’s songwriting, stage presence, bravery, and humanity put iron within the narrative’s glove, and supply ample receipts for the invoice of products being offered, right here. Indeed, after they say, “He sings to everyone,” it’s straightforward to imagine.
As a straight bio train with admirable consideration paid to all sides of the topic, “Willie Nelson & Family” passes the sniff take a look at and even impresses at instances. For these trying to discover how a singer-songwriter managed to stay at or close to the inflection level of each main growth in nation music for 50+ years, and what meaning about not simply the person, however an business and a nation at massive, this ain’t it. One day somebody will crack that code, and so they may even be capable to do it in lower than 260 minutes. Until then, although, there’s this. [C]
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