From his era-defining work with Art Garfunkel to the sometimes problematic legacy of 80s hit Graceland, Alex Gibney’s documentary strikes a pure and personal note
lex Gibney’s docu-celebration of Paul Simon unfolds over an epic three-and-a-half hours, but he persuades you that this is exactly how much time was needed. There is something very involving and very personal here: something to do with the slight, pure line of Simon’s unmistakable vocal presence, vulnerable and even fragile, perhaps, but also insistent and durable.
The pair’s last album together, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was the all-timer whose pressures finally broke their partnership and 17-year friendship as Garfunkel, the better singer but not a composer, tried to make it in the movies.
The second half of the film is about Simon’s fascinating and unique solo career. There is, however, nothing about his relationship with Shelley Duvall, and only a little about his short-lived marriage to Carrie Fisher . Simon stayed in the public eye in the most startling way: he was a virtual mainstay of TV’s Saturday Night Live, during which period his comb-over really did make him look like an accountant. In the 80s, his hair settled down, perhaps with surgical assistance.
Then in 1986 he found his moment of contested inspiration. Simon’s love of South African music led him to seek out the artists themselves, whose work he curated on the smash hit album Graceland. Perhaps hurtfully, Simon was not invited to perform at Live Aid . Yet this was his globalist moment.
What comes across from this film is that Graceland was an act of inspirational geopolitical innocence, born of amazing imagination and creative entrepreneurialism. Simon was utterly unconcerned by “culture war” objections and probably didn’t even think about them until well after the event. He brought South African music out of isolation at exactly the right moment; he didn’t musicwash apartheid, he found a way of mediating African music into the mainstream, with utter sincerity and commitment.
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