OVP Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (2014)

Film: Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (2014)
Stars: Glen Campbell
Director: James Keach
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"I'm Not Gonna Miss You")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I am a huge Glen Campbell fan.  For a gay man born in the 1980's, this is probably not something you'd expect, but there it is.  I have Glen Campbell songs on constant repeat on my iPhone, I can tell you every single lick of "Gentle on My Mind" or "Wichita Lineman."  His music has that sort of tenor of someone that has plucked something not out of thin air, but out of the American songbook.  Try to listen to "True Grit" and think that it hasn't been written for all-time, and not just in 1969.  You simply cannot, because like the truly great country singers, the Willie Nelsons, the Dolly Partons, the Patsy Clines, Glen Campbell is someone who is singing raw emotion, which has existed for centuries.

So I watched his documentary both as a fan and as someone a bit nervous that his memory was going to be exploited.  Recently airing on CNN (and god bless them for doing that-between this and Blackfish it might be the first great news reporting they've done since the Gulf War) the documentary was filmed while Campbell was in the throes of Alzheimer's, going on a last farewell tour and releasing his final album.  As a result, we were relying more on his wife and children to respect his privacy rather than on his own discretion, because as we see in the film, Campbell's ability to discern shades of self-revelation have largely disappeared.  Considering the legal fights that have been waging between Campbell's wife and his children, I was curious to see if this was a sad case of a family trying to make a buck off their talented patriarch's legacy (we've seen that far too many times before).

The film threads that line pretty closely, it should be stated.  There are moments in the film, such as discussions of Campbell's issues with incontinence and when he is seen having violent outbreaks toward the end of the film that you're certain he wouldn't have wanted to have them released, while there are other moments that he clearly seems to want to make a sacrifice of his own privacy in hopes of finding more recognition for this crippling disease.  As a result, I'm not sure if morally it's appropriate to watch this film, but if it is (and it's out there now, so you might as well make the jump) it's a fascinating and compelling one.

The most interesting aspects of this are both the ways that we see Campbell start to falter and the ways that we can see that reflected in the dementia of people we know in real life.  This is where his celebrity makes a HUGE difference in the film and why you couldn't have had this same punch of intrigue with just a random person suffering from dementia.  We all know people who have had Alzheimer's or some other mentally-impairing illness late in life, but we only recognize the struggle there because we know them so well.  While with a stranger it would have been "so sad," with Campbell we can see it in the way that he clings to music, and the ways he starts to let some of that slip.  There's a terrific scene which had me in tears about halfway through the film where Campbell sings "Rhinestone Cowboy" at the Grammys after winning a Lifetime Achievement Award.  Campbell flubs several of the words, though he keeps trucking through.  Watching him miss cues that he (and all his fans) know by heart is shattering, but it gets across a familiarity instantly to the audience.  We also see the way that he clings to certain things while other aspects of his life start to disintegrate.  There are moments late in the film where you're practically begging the family to stop the concert tour (which they eventually do), but it's sort of staggering to watch him come alive on stage, staying a wondrous entertainer even when he has trouble remembering his daughter's name, and you kind of get that it might be less about the money and more about seeing the glimmers of his old self that erupt onstage.

The film gets political (thankfully) late in the film with a particularly impassioned speech by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) where they discuss the minute amount of money that is spent each year on Alzheimer's research, despite the fact that with Baby Boomers starting into their seventies now it will become more and more of a national epidemic.  Pelosi makes a fair point about how "this is about how much of the budget we can get; you ask anyone in Washington about Alzheimer's and they all want to cure it but it's all about how much money you're actually willing to spend to find the cure."  The film is littered with musical superstars ranging from Brad Paisley to Sir Paul McCartney talking about Campbell and his influence on music, and you can see the amount of respect he has amassed as an artist through all of these decades.  President Bill Clinton even points out that he knew Glen Campbell songs growing up, but hopes that his greatest lasting legacy is in creating awareness of Alzheimer's and hopefully a cure.

The film received one Oscar nomination, for Best Original Song, one composed by Campbell and Julian Raymond.  Like so much of Campbell's music, it's simple but very powerful, telling the story of how his wife is the last person he'll ever love, but he won't miss her because he won't remember her.  On paper it's in the category of "and then he shot my dog" sort of country music-depressing, but in reality it works quite beautifully and is a solid ode to Glen Campbell, as is this movie.