Alex Ross Perry’s intriguing documentary about 90s band Pavement offers a kind of cine-quadriptych, whose effect is to obscure clarity
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f ever a film-maker and a band were a match in indie heaven it is lo-fi writer-director Alex Ross Perry and 90s band Pavement, from Stockton, California (described here as “the Cleveland of California”); the latter made critically adored albums throughout the 1990s with comparisons to the Fall and Lou Reed, while never signing to a major label. Now Perry has made a film about Pavement and it seems to be his intention here to avoid, strenuously and at all costs, obviousness – and perhaps the most clunkingly obvious thing for any newbie to ask about is the name. Pavement as opposed to Sidewalk because of a Brit affectation? No: just a functional name chosen almost at random and one that sounded right.
Intriguingly, but finally a bit frustratingly, Perry is running four ideas at once, a kind of cine-quadriptych with the plurality signalled by the title. Firstly, it’s a documentary about Pavement’s return to live performance in 2022, complete with milky, blurry analogue video flashbacks to their 90s heyday. Secondly, an account of a touring museum exhibition about the band. Thirdly: a study of a jukebox musical project about Pavement called Slanted! Enchanted! after one of their albums, which had a three-day off-Broadway workshop presentation. And finally, a conventional fictional dramatisation of the band’s history, entitled Range Life, of which we see a few clips, with Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus, Nat Wolff as guitarist Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as singer-instrumentalist Bob Nastanovich and Jason Schwartzman as Matador Records chief Chris Lombardi. But it isn’t entirely clear whether Range Life really exists as a standalone film, or how to judge or imagine its independent existence. We get a scene showing the actors doing an onstage Q&A after a screening, and it doesn’t look like a fictional spoof.
