Review of Heaven Adores You (2014) by Beth M — 10 Jun 2015

This film should have been cut down to an hour due to lack of substantive video... and it's really communicating mainly to diehard fans of Elliott Smith. I kept thinking of the recent Cobain documentary "Montage of Heck" and its shortcomings.

In that film, the first half, at least, was creative and colorful and you understand what happened to Kurt. "Heaven" never really lets you in on "the secret" of Elliott Smith. Unless you really know Elliott's music, life and history, you feel like an outsider trying to guess what's going on.

The film's main shortcoming is the heavy reliance on video (sans audio) of Portland, New York and LA - street scenes, walls of graffiti, bridges, factories, bird's eye views of neighborhoods and scenes of rain and snow from inside a car window as the director apparently drove miles and miles and filmed every square foot.

It's dizzying the way the camera twists and turns, sometimes upside down. I kept wondering when they were going to show Elliott instead of all that scenery. For three-fourths of the film, there are only a couple of shots of Elliott performing (audio dubbed in with studio versions of the songs).

.. and they rely mostly on radio interviews, which don't reveal a lot. Suddenly it gets dark and you don't know why - unless you'd followed Elliott's life in the tabloids or news. In the end, you don't understand what happened to him.

A few interviews with his manager and publicist don't reveal much - they just elude to his drug use, "meanness" and how he changed and how they just couldn't deal with him anymore. You never really understand anything about his family - where were his parents? What happened to them? A few brief childhood clippings at the start leaves you wondering.

When the text appears on the screen telling the audience that he died and was stabbed, it never tells what the official report said. It's a big, giant question mark from beginning to end. I couldn't even connect to the songs - they were just a distant collage/soundtrack in the background.

He sang like Paul Simon? He wrote like John Lennon? I've listened to and loved many of Elliott's songs, but didn't hear them in this film. I think they were trying to release long lost recordings instead, which, again, is for diehard fans and not those of us who just want to know and understand Elliott.

I'm not even sure what the title means.