That was an excellent one.

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Sadly Over-hyped

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The struggle of an artist battling against his own demons has long been played out in both the movies and reality. Musicians such as Ray Charles, Johnny Cash and Jim Morrison fought against drug and alcohol addiction and led to their lives being played out on screen. They suffered for choices they made. Daniel Johnston, a cult figure and genius songwriter, battled with mental illness for most of his life. His art both benefited and suffered for his affliction. But Johnston was helpless of his fate. His mental instability deepened as his fame grew, and it's all captured in detail in this wonderful documentary.Daniel Johnston was always a strange child, growing up with a seemingly obsessive compulsion for art, and later to music. He was vastly creative, inspired and individual in his output. When he decided that he wanted to be a musician and be famous, his produced an album on tape, and advertised his work to producers and writers, and blew everyone away. Always influenced by his muse - a girl he fell in love with at college and never saw again - his songs were tortured and heart- rendering, yet joyous and upbeat. But his increasingly unstable mental state put his career on hold. After indulging in marijuana and LSD, he was submitted to a mental hospital after attacking his friend with a lead pipe. And so began Daniel Johnston's tragic public decline, as he alienated himself from his family and friends, and intensified his obsession with God, and ultimately, the Devil.I had never heard of Daniel Johnston's music before this film. His music is not for everyone's taste - his voice is high-pitched and unbalanced, and his techniques non-conformal and almost old-school - but no-one could deny the tortured genius behind it. Seeing him go on stage for the first time, all skinny and uncomfortable, glancing nervously at the camera every now and then, there was something awe-inspiring about him. It makes it all the heart-breaking to see him now, bloated and old, physically damaged by his mental illness. And yet his thirst for art remains.There are plenty of bio-documentaries and music documentaries out there that are capable of blowing you away (Gimme Shelter and The Last Waltz come immediately to mind), but although this is a great music documentary, it just as brilliant as a serious portrayal of the devastating effects of mental illness. As Johnston had the nack of recording practically everything he did on tape, we get to witness almost first hand his life and breakdown. There are early tapes of him arguing with his mother, and phone calls asking him to wash the graffiti he did on the Statue of Liberty. We also hear troubled calls from his loved ones and friends, and hear the effect it was having on them. One friend states that the troubled genius's of the past, like Van Gogh, are fascinating to read about and amplifies their God-like status. But no- one living has ever had to live with them, and witness it unfold before their eyes.An excellent documentary that really gets to the heart of it's subject. And I'll definitely be hunting down Daniel Johnston's work.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Daniel Johnston's life story is both moving and terrifying. It's so moving to see a person with such a terrible psychiatric condition to become sort of a music legend, to see how people everywhere has come to know him... But it's terrifying as well because all the horrible things he's been through (delusions, nervous breakdowns), he's been through a real hell, and at the end of the movie you barely can help to be moved.Feuerzeig has made a sensitive and respectful portrait of Daniel's life. He's showed us clearly the evolution of Daniel from the day he as born till today: his limitless artistic talent, his hallucinations, his fight against the devil... He also puts clear that there was some people (from the music industry) that tried to use Daniel and after that they threw him like a used plastic bag. Fortunately nowadays Dniel has a peaceful live at his parent's home and he even makes some tour to give his music to people everywhere.Thanks Daniel, and thanks Jeff for showing the world the lucidity of madness.*My rate: 8/10

Everyone I talked too about this documentary said it was one of the best and a must see. I however, strongly disagree.First off. It's just OK. It's not like this incredible film thats worth rushing out and seeing. It's shot pretty plainly, and I actually thought the reenactments of what happened in Daniels life was kind of cheesy and took away from the film.Secondly, how can people honestly believe that this guy is an incredible artist? He sings the same type of formulated love songs over and over, lyrically he's sub par (to even compare him to Brian Wilson is an insult), and overall is just very bland. To me thats like saying Wesley Willis was an innovative genius. I don't think anyone really had the heart to tell this "artist" he didn't really have an abundant amount of talent. His art was interesting but it was the same blasé bullshit of someone who is mental disturbed. They compare him in the film to some incredible artists such like Sylvia Plath. That was pretty insulting.Overall the film is just OK. It doesn't really explain why Daniel is so crazy. He's defiantly someone struggling to become something he's not. It's not really worth a look unless your a die hard pretentious music snob. (ya know, "oh man the only good sonic youth album is day dream nation." Those kinds of folks.) Daniel Johnston WAS crazy. Big deal. It's not something worth glamorizing.

Anyone who reads me regularly will probably know that I prefer watching films without knowing anything about them beforehand. Ideally, I don't want to have even the slightest idea about the plot or subject, the cast, or even who the director was. Of course, that's sometimes difficult to do, but as much as possible, I avoid reading or seeing anything about a film before I watch. I want to be a blank slate at the start of a film, without preconceptions.I had never heard of Daniel Johnston before. So I watched this film for an hour before I finally realized, to my shock, that it's not some kind of Spinal Tap-like joke, which it seemed to be. When I thought it was a joke, I was enjoying it quite a bit. It appeared to be a mockumentary about a fat, dumpy, mentally ill guy whom people were calling a musical genius--"the best singer-songwriter of his generation", even though as we see in some concert footage, he can't really sing, play an instrument or write songs very well. At all.In further explication of his "genius", we learn that he also did visual art--which were more or less the standard drawings of a kid obsessed with comic books and possessing some natural talent that could be developed. And we learn that he was an aspiring filmmaker. We see the standard young film fanatic kinda home movies--the kid could hold a camera steady and very rudimentarily frame a shot and do some editing. Nothing extraordinary, but again, maybe some talent there that could be developed. But the film kept focusing on his music, which the main character was maybe the most obsessed with, but for which he had absolutely no natural talent. Seemed funny to me, although maybe a bit too subtly executed to be as hilarious as Spinal Tap.As it went on, however, it seemed to be less funny, and there were an increasing number of scenes that would have cost a fortune to fake. There were people I knew showing up in the film in historical shots, with Daniel inserted in what I thought was a Forrest Gump way. This was happening more and more, so finally, at the hour mark, I had to run to the computer and check the "All Music Guide" to see if maybe there really was a Daniel Johnston, and this wasn't a joke.What had been mildly amusing and very quirky suddenly became perplexing. It's hard to believe that I'm not being put on. Now, I'm no objectivist on aesthetic value, but it's very difficult--and pretty frustrating--to see what anyone would find attractive about Daniel's music. He seems to only know a couple chords and very stereotypical chord progressions on both piano and guitar, and he can barely change from one chord to the next. His melodies are arbitrary--they're just whatever pitches happen to squeak out of his mouth as he recites his banal lyrics, which utilize "spoon-moon-June"-styled rhyme schemes. He barely understands rhythm. Yes, he's passionate about what he's doing, but so are the vast majority of people who can actually play an instrument, sing and write interesting songs. Johnston is no Syd Barrett. I'm a musician, too, and I could very literally teach anyone, and I mean anyone--learning disabilities and mental disorders or not--who has never touched a musical instrument before to do something comparable to what Daniel does within a week to a month. Why wouldn't they be considered geniuses? Why wouldn't they be well known, be offered record contracts, etc.? For that matter, why am I not considered a genius? When it comes to Daniel's mental illness (or illnesses, maybe), the film is much more interesting to me, although I haven't known many people with a serious mental illness, so probably there's not that much very unusual about Daniel on that end, either. I did get to know Jaco Pastorius towards the end of his life, and there were some similar problems there behavior-wise (as well as similar problems for the people around him, including trying to have him institutionalized against his will). However, Jaco actually was a musical genius.On technical terms, The Devil and Daniel Johnston isn't exactly a bad film. Director Jeff Feuerzeig probably didn't have an easy time of it, because he had to piece together a history of Daniel primarily by relying on home movies of poor quality. There are too many shots of cassette tapes and empty locations, but the film is pieced together competently and tells its story well enough. If you're at all a fan of Johnston, you should like The Devil and Daniel Johnston quite a bit.But this is not the film that I want to see. The film that I want to see is one that explores the psychological and cultural phenomena of how someone like Johnston can come to be considered a genius, how he can come to work with so many artists who truly are gifted, especially when he continually does things to sabotage himself, and especially when not only do many other gifted artists not ever get a break, but any arbitrary person could do what Johnston does. I doubt I'll ever be able to quite figure it out.(Edit:) Out of curiosity, I later listened to a few tracks from Daniel Johnston's albums--a couple from the early homemade tapes, and a couple from the later more heavily produced stuff. Oddly, the songs I heard, while not great in my view, showed at least some skill musically and vocally. That makes me wonder why Feuerzeig chose the songs that he did for the film, as they show Johnston as completely incompetent musically.