Starring Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White
Directed by Davis Guggenheim
★★★★
As a guitarist myself, I might not be considered the most impartial person to review Davis Guggenheim’s frank, honest and highly entertaining guitar documentary, It Might Get Loud. I will however, do my best to inform from a non primary as well as primary demographical point of view; indeed, this should be the appropriate stance to take because it is how well this balance is kept throughout that ultimately makes this film so enjoyable.
The premise: Three guitarists from three different generations discuss the electric guitar and what it means to them and their careers. The three musicians in question are Jimmy Page (late of Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (most notably of The White Stripes). The format sees them sitting together on a stage surrounded by their various set ups as they converse about favourite guitars, most inspiring records and so on. This is interspersed with footage of their various careers as well as visits to notable locations such as were they grew up and where they wrote and recorded classic songs.
The choice of protagonists works well as they are markedly different from each other in terms of background, musical style and their reasons for getting on the career path they chose. Page comes across as an endearing gent whose articulate storytelling and life long passion for music makes for compulsive viewing; The Edge is his enthusiastic, likeable self as he takes us on a trip through Dublin’s North Side, taking in Mount Temple secondary school where it all first happened for him and his fellow band mates. Jack White appears as the most elusive of the three, yet his demeanour and bare bones attitude display him as an admirable iconoclast to a degree not often seen in the showy ego fuelled world he frequents.
The film flows well as the various stories shift between the three and there are some great moments along the way; The Edge’s wry sense of humour, the Amish-like old worldliness on Jack White home life, but the highlight has to be the wonderful expressions on the The Edge and White’s faces as Jimmy breaks into the infamous opening riff of Zeppelin’s ‘Whole lotta Love’ (think wide eyed children on Christmas morning).
In the end, It Might Get Loud comes across more as a testimony of three artistic people who stuck to doing to exactly what they wanted to do, as opposed to being solely a concentrated deconstruction of an instrument and its history.
Sure, if you don’t care to cast much thought on the ins and outs of guitar adoration, then you might find The Edge discussing the finer details of his effects pedals or Jimmy Page pinpointing moments of greatness in his aged vinyl collection a little dragging. Ultimately though, to truly dislike this film would be to dislike Rock n’ Roll at its warmest heart. Would you really be telling the truth?