Treating her body as an instrument, and her voice like an entire orchestra, trailblazing multidisciplinary artist Meredith Monk has amassed a remarkable catalogue of work blending musical composition, dance, film, opera, performance art, gallery installations and more.
A playfully packaged but densely detailed documentary by Billy Shebar and David Roberts, Monk in Pieces aims to distil this kaleidoscopic career into a free-form mosaic, with mostly satisfying results. Behind the film’s lightly experimental form lies an engaging, relatable, very human story about an uncompromising female artist battling to keep her unique vision alive, despite periods of poverty and obscurity and sneering disdain from sexist male critics.
A fixture on the downtown New York art scene for more than 50 years, the 82-year-old Monk may not be household name, but her explorations of voice-driven, dance-heavy, physically intense performance have had an inspirational impact on the likes of Björk and David Byrne, who both appear in this documentary. Her music has also appeared on film and TV soundtracks including The Big Lebowski, True Detective and Baby Reindeer.
Fresh from its big-screen world premiere in Berlin this week, Monk in Pieces is scheduled for TV broadcast in Germany and France on the high-end arts channel Arte. As a quality docu-portrait of a prestige artist with an international reputation, it works as an accessible primer on Monk, with appeal to connoisseurs and casual fans alike. Further festival bookings, specialist theatrical and streamer deals are all solid prospects.
As it subtitle “A Concept Album” suggests, Monk in Pieces is structured as an anthology of chapters, each loosely themed around a single piece of work. This gives the film-makers freedom to jump between different styles and eras, blending archive and contemporary footage with quirky digressions, such as stop-motion animation sequences based on Monk’s 1970s dream journals. Echoing the composer’s own methods, Shebar and Roberts also make strong use of collage and montage. In one elegant super-cut assemblage, we see Monk breaking down her artistic philosophy with striking consistency and clarity across multiple interviews, often repeating the same phrases. In another witty sequence, a cluster of academics and critics each attempt to define Monk in their own terms, creating a cacophonous chorus of overlapping views, more discord than discourse.
Fortunately, Shebar and Roberts do not take a fully avant-garde approach to the documentary form. They also cover plenty of biographical detail on Monk’s childhood, from the eye problem that led her to join a Dalcroze eurhythmics programme, where she first realised that music and movement are intimately linked, to her mother’s depression following the collapse of her highly successful career as a commercial jingles singer, which convinced her that being an independent artist was a smarter long-term strategy.
But the film is more elusive about Monk’s adult private life, featuring just a thin section on her 22-year relationship with Dutch-born choreographer Mieke von Hoek, who died in 2002. She may hate being pinned down with labels and categories, but some interrogation of how her queerness, her Jewish ancestry, her embrace of Buddhism, and other cultural/political factors have informed her work could have given Monk in Pieces extra journalistic heft.
For audiences who may be unfamiliar with Monk, Shebar and Roberts interview multiple collaborators and contemporaries from across her long career including art-rock icon David Byrne, who worked with her on his idiosyncratic feature film True Stories (1986), and composer Philip Glass, who calls her a “self-contained theatre company.” Björk is also a friend and fan of Monk, having performed her work live, including a version of her mournful Gotham Lullaby on the night of the 9/11 attacks. She shares some insightful comments here, alongside gushing praise for Monk, during a shared audio conversation.
As a lively audiovisual tapestry, Monk in Pieces is hard to fault, bouncing restlessly between interviews and performance clips, all underscored by a rich soundtrack collage of Monk’s music. Archive footage of former US President Obama awarding Monk the National Medal of Arts in 2015 could have lent this story a sense of closure, but Shebar and Roberts prefer an open-ended conclusion more akin to witnessing a restless living artwork, still tuned into a vast cosmic orchestra of sound, one woman’s life as an unfinished symphony.
Directors, screenwriters: Billy Shebar, David Roberts
Cast: Meredith Monk, Björk, David Byrne, Ping Chong, John Schaefer, Lanny Harrison, Julia Wolfe
Cinematography:Jeff Hutchens, Ben Stechschulte
Editing: Sabine Krayenbühl
Music: Meredith Monk
Animation: Paul Barritt
Producers: Billy Shebar, Susan Margolin, David Roberts
Production companies: 110th Street Films (US), St. Marks Productions (US)
World sales: Cinephil, Tel Aviv
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Dokumente)
In English
94 minutes
