One of the key elements, perhaps even the most important, is the music; it plays the most noticeable and overwhelming part, anyway. In the credits it mentions that most of the soundtrack was either originally written or selected from a specific music festival, which I think makes it strangely more admirable.
I found the people in the film attending the festival to be really quite interesting. Save for a couple of annoying ones, I found them to be likable, interesting, and I wanted to see more of them and hear more of what they had to say. The film does get quite repetitive in its scenes of storytelling, and towards the start it shows one particular activity a few more times than was needed to get across how it feels, and it goes on at least 25 minutes longer than it needs to. I find that most documentaries get their point across within the first hour and the rest just seems there to make up a longer runtime. I find with most of them that they only require 90 minutes maximum and thus they would be a lot easier to digest.
The film was made by a couple of first time directors, Corinna Villari-McFarlane and Robert Cannan, and I have to say it’s an impressive debut indeed. Although it would seem disappointing from a more experienced filmmaker, I can overlook some of the film’s flaws because it’s a debut.
Whether it’s a good or a bad thing, I’ve never seen a film quite like this before. But since I can’t really say I enjoyed it then I can’t really say I liked it a great deal, although I marginally did like it. I still recommend it however, but as a cinema experience and not just a watch on DVD.
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