Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been
(Canada, 115 min.)
Dir. Barry Avrich
Prod. Mark Selby, Taraji P. Henson, Barry Avrich
Programmes: TIFF Docs (World premiere)
Few artists that have shaped musical history as indelibly as Darlene Love. Yet despite a legacy lending her voice to some of the greatest songs in popular music, for many people, she’s at best the answer to a trivia question and at worst someone whose name escapes them entirely. While those in the know treasure Love as an iconic talent, can say they fought for her inclusion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and even championed her via the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), there’s no time like the present to shine a spotlight on this immense talent.
The woman born Darlene Wright is inexorably linked to the musician and monster that gave her the name Love. Her vocal work with Phil Spector defined an entire era, even if often the tracks Love cut with him would go out under the names of other artists who then would mime her vocals on TV. Morgan Neville’s stupendous celebration of background singers, 20 Feet from Stardom, did an exemplary job of detailing the travails of Love and fellow artists like Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Claudia Lenear, and Tata Vega when they took what Bruce Springsteen refers to as those mighty steps away from the back of the stage to the front.
This latest project comes from veteran filmmaker Barry Avrich who has for decades highlighted creative individuals and encouraged them to detail their stories in their own words. Love goes over similar ground covered in Neville’s film and in numerous other interviews and projects. What’s unique here are all the other elements that shaped Love and her career, especially her relationship with her children, as well her perspectives on the struggles that several of her sons had while spending time imprisoned after missteps in their youth.
The story of Love going from cleaning houses in Beverly Hills to being encouraged to get back on stage may be familiar to die-hard fans, but as told here, with the inclusion of other voices such as “Little” Steven Van Zandt, Lou Adler, Paul Shaffer, and others, there’s a much more fulsome understanding of the rise, fall, and rise again of her career.
It’s, of course, fitting that there’s so much love coming from the interviewees—including David Letterman, Cher, Robert Smigel and Dionne Warwick—who helped provide her a platform over the years. There’s genuine warmth as each artist bestows praise upon a gifted talent. Many of these voices recognize all that Love had gone through, from her restrictive contracts and the erasure of her fame by those controlling her career, right through to her many attempts at mainstream success. However, each interviewee carefully arrives at the core understanding that this is an immense talent more than worthy of success that didn’t come easily to her.
Avrich, along with producers Taraji P. Henson and Mark Selby, and editor Dave Kennedy, have provided an excellent opportunity for Love’s legacy to be both celebrated and elevated. Mixing in newly recorded live performances between the segments, we see that Love has lost little of her vocal prowess, and while some of the songs have dropped a few keys, there’s an intensity and beauty to the tracks that’s undiminished as she enters her late 80s.
The music is magnificent, the interviews probing yet sympathetic, and much of the archival material is beautifully interwoven. So what, then, is not to love about this film about Love?
Well, from the opening credits, right through to B-roll scattered throughout, there’s excessive manipulated imagery that mars an otherwise breathtakingly human story. It’s unclear from the credits if any of the material was generated outright or the result of CGI mixed with procedural prompts, but many of the images suffer from an inherent artifice that takes one out of the film. The uncanniness is all so unnecessary, and given how much material there is to draw from, it’s a real shame.
Still, putting those elements aside, the moments of witnessing Love in front of her band, or even the sweetness of her family gathered around her table, provide a blissful reality that outshines anything artificial. The contemporary performances are as grand as that piano that the likes of Shaffer and Marc Shaiman thump away on, and Love’s take on “I Know Where I’ve Been” from the latter’s musical Hairspray provides the project with the most apt of numbers.
So while Avrich’s film may be more straightforward than the last doc with which Darlene was most directly associated, there’s still enough to learn, and many more elements to be amplified, to make for something truly special. Forgiving as best one can the graphical elements, the glory of Love’s voice and the sprit she exudes on screen eclipse any visuals. We are now, better than ever, witness to where Darlene Love has been, and it’s comforting to know that her legacy will continue to be championed, her voice will continue to heard, and her story will reach that many more people.
