Documentary Keeps Van Zandt Obscure

Townes Van Zandt was the greatest songwriter of all time. At least, that's what Be Here to Love Me would have you believe.

The tension of the dizzying opening scene is alleviated by slower scenes that recall the comfort and familiarity of a country landscape as seen through a car window. These calmer shots are scattered consistently and abundantly throughout the film. At times, though, such drawn-out interludes make it feel as though the filmmakers ran out of footage and simply took a drive through the country to make up the missing minutes.

Similarly, the plot meanders without ever reaching solid ground. The presentation of Van Zandt's life story is repetitive at best and tediously formulaic at worst. Recalling all the tropes of a typical rock star biopic, Van Zandt's cinematic life seems to deviate little from the cycle of alcohol abuse, divorce, and recovery that we've come to know so well.

If Van Zandt was half the man Be Here to Love Me makes him out to be, then he deserves more.

The filmmakers do take for granted a certain reverence for Van Zandt's talents on the part of their audience, even though he is unknown to all but the most dedicated folk music fans. Still, despite Van Zandt's lack of commercial success, a few covers of his songs went on to become hits in their own right.

Interviews with stars like Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett, among those who have benefited from his songwriting, contribute little to the narrative flow and feel more like name-dropping than anything else. While the film tries to promote the message that celebrity doesn't matter, it relies too heavily on those names to be able to prove that point successfully.

Still, the film does offer a small education on a musical figure, though it doesn't contribute much past the general folk music stereotypes. Most notably, it confirms the widely held belief that people in the country really like to wear denim shirts.

Like that country drive near the film's beginning, Be Here to Love Me never reaches an ending. The movie ends without providing a satisfactory conclusion.

Seeing the film will teach you about a minor character in music history, and possibly lead to the legal purchase of a Townes Van Zandt album. Then you can be confident in the knowledge that you do, in fact, have the most pretentiously esoteric music collection at Columbia.