The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights stands out among rock tour documentaries, due equally to the strangeness of the endeavor - Jack White & his "big sister" Meg played every territorial province in Canada in the Summer of 2007, finishing with a tenth anniversary show in Nova Scotia - and the delicate balance of poetic intimacy & humor portrayed offstage.
Released this week after nearly three years' development, the doc appeases both devoted and casual fans and holds interest even for those new to the band. Searing, blues-soaked performances and traveling footage is interspersed with clips of an interview with Jack & Meg set in a rustic room, where their interviewer lies mostly unacknowledged on a bed behind them. The deconstruction of their own self-mythology is anything but scandalous, and certainly doesn't give away much more than we already knew, but there's an impossible gravity to the subtle moments of reflection and banter between the two characters - and the music is ferocious enough to rip the gates off of Hell.
White, a champion of pre-internet music culture who savors the struggle in making magic onstage, is self-deprecating and humble in conversation, but with a clear, pronounced focus and specific awareness of motivation. There's an adorable intimacy between he and ex-wife Meg, both familiar as family and delicate as dew. Meg never quite feels at home in conversation, and even onstage it's with great reluctance that she steps up to the mic for a spontaneous, heartbreakingly cute rendition of "Cold Cold Night".
White's defiance of accelerated digital culture was nourished by their touring route, which largely consisted of makeshift venues in former tent cities. Nevertheless, technology threatens to scatter the novelty with increasing frequency as the film progresses; by the final third of the tour, droves of die-hard internet-wielding fans were showing up at the surprise shows almost immediately after announcement. The stops became such a that the Stripes crew had to announce their last surprise gig in Nova Scotia only minutes before it took place.
The unorthodox performances - which included bowling alleys, fishing boats, classrooms, public buses and a gathering of Inuit elders (with whom the duo tasted their first sampling of raw caribou) - were refreshing attempts to shake up the performer/audience dynamic and create exactly the little sparks of magic that make it worthwhile to the band.
Once the small-scale grinning singalong acoustics of the day's offbeat shows are finished, we're transported to their full-stage concerts - another beast entirely. The blistering spitfire of Jack's stage presence, ripping through a catalogue-spanning array of songs and fan-cherished covers with beautiful, furious focus and devotion to the energy screaming out of his amps and reverberating back through the audience. He hasn't used a setlist in several years, a fascinating contradiction to the meticulous design of the band's look and atmosphere.
Though fragmented and mostly from a neutral zone, we're shown a portrait of Jack White offstage as a artist eager to break the fourth wall, desperate to shake up the formula and deliver something that engages, instills passion, inspires further creativity. Malloy captures the fascinating paradox of White, in his ability to maintain an air of personal mystery and distance as a performer - an incredibly rare accomplishment in todays all-access world - while being entirely candid and forthcoming about the artifices decorating his craft.
The same cannot be said of Meg White, however. When Meg does speak, she's so quiet that subtitles follow every line she utters. She tolerantly participates in the playful outings, but largely seems as if she could take or leave the entire production. It's clearly Jack's train, but his reverence for her creates an odd dichotomy in which we're constantly scratching for a closer glimpse at this quiet, basic beat-keeper. It never quite happens, except for an unexplained torrent of tears at the very end of the film as she leans against Jack while he plays at the piano.
By the end of the experience, filmmaker Emmett Malloy succeeds at making a third White Stripes member out of the camera, but he does so slowly and with a very gentle respect for the intense separation between the stage and the personal moments. As enigmatic as they are color-specific, it's by design that we leave the film without really having learned anything about Jack. In fact, the most prominently featured insight is Meg's apparently blossoming depression.
A beautifully shot film that captures both the furious intensity of the White Stripes' live performance and seldom-seen intimate moments between the two players, Under Great White Northern Lights is a poetic glimpse of an enigmatic band at the height of their prowess, in unfamiliar but massively welcoming territories. If you're a fan, you should own it. If you love Rock n Roll, you owe it to yourself to see it.
CraveOnline's Call: 9 out of 10
