| First-time director Sam Jones is one lucky man. Initially slated as a behind-the-scenes electronic press kit, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart soon became a case of brilliant timing. Jones's camera caught every moment of one of the more infamous blunders in the history of the recording industry. Even my mom knows the story by now.
After delivering the master tapes of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to Reprise records, Wilco was quickly dropped from the label. Through internet streaming and constant touring, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot soon became a hit, officially released on Nonesuch (which comically, like Reprise, is an arm of the mammoth Warner Music) and enshrined as one of the finest records of the decade.
Much like Radiohead's Meeting People Is Easy, Jones’s I Am Trying To Break Your Heart works as a rockumentary because it plays so well as both musical artifact and pure soap opera. Running adjacent to the band's drop from Reprise, the interior acrimony with co-founding member Jay Bennett was also caught on film. Still, Wilco has always been the Jeff Tweedy show, and watching this fumbling genius perform, fight and cry only makes you admire him more. That it's shot so beautifully by Jones (whose history in photography is evident in each and every shot) makes everything just as pretty to look at as it is to listen to.
Sure, nothing quite holds the gravity of Mick Jagger watching the Altamont festival murder frame-by-frame, which many believe put final punctuation on the ’60s in Gimme Shelter, but as an all-access portrait of an artist often misunderstood, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart is a miniature stunner. |
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