(UK/Sweden, 86 min.)
Dir. Malik Bendjelloul
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| Photo by Hal Wilson, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics |
Rodriguez’s music caught the ear of one producer, Steve
Rowland, who agreed to deliver the musician’s next album, Coming from Reality. As with Cold
Fact, Coming from Reality barely
registered a sale and was thus considered a failure. As Rowland notes in one of
the more emotional interviews in the film, the record label dropped Rodriguez
just two weeks before Christmas. Rowland found this fact particularly cold and
distressing because one of Rodriguez’s songs on the album, “Cause,” begins with the
line, “Cause I lost my jobs two weeks before Christmas.” It’s as if Rodriguez
foresaw his own failure.
It’s
this sense of anticipation in his music, however, that made Rodriguez such a
success. Searching for Sugar Man
moves from snowy Detroit to sunny South Africa where a collection of music
buffs enthusiastically recant the popularity of Rodriguez’s music. The fans say
that Rodriguez was more popular than Elvis and The Rolling Stones in South
Africa. One record store owner, Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman, notes that Cold Fact was a staple on shelves in
stores and homes across the country. Such a good musician, he recalls, “It’s
such a shame he’s dead.”
The
death of Rodriguez is a muddled affair as explained by the South Africans. One
man says that Rodriguez shot himself on stage, while another says that the
cause of death was self-immolation during a concert. Overdoses and accidents
also feed into the rumor mill, and the only consensus is that a very talented
man suffered a tragic and early death.
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| Courtesy of Malik Bendjelloul/Sony Pictures Classics |
The
death of Rodriguez’s work is particularly important for his mythology in South
African culture. His music, which was rumored to have first travelled from the
States in the bag of some tourist, struck a chord with apartheid-era South
Africans. The counter-cultural and anti-establishment lyrics of Rodriguez’s
music voiced many of the sentiments percolating in the citizens who wished to
see an end to apartheid and state violence. So much did Rodriguez’s music
connect with the South Africans that the South African government actually
censored songs on the LP, the method of which was to scratch out undesired
tracks on copies of Cold Fact so that
they simply couldn’t play. In short, it seems that the American fans of
Rodriguez were correct in calling the musician ahead of his time: Americans
didn’t buy it, but Rodriguez anticipated a philosophy for change in another
time and place.
Searching for Sugar
Man traces the roots of Rodriguez’s impact on South Africans through a
group of fans, represented in the film by Segerman and journalist/musicologist/detective
Craig Bartholomew-Strydom. Segerman and Bartholomew-Strydom explain that they
began to study the lyrics of Rodriguez’s songs and used the scant specificities
embedded within the music to piece together a biography. It made little
progress, and the man resided mostly within the music. They then got the idea
to follow the money trail. If his records were selling in South Africa, then
someone in America must surely be collecting the royalties. This hunt and the
ensuing online search eventually led to a radical discovery, and one that’s almost
too incredible to believe.
By using the story of the quest for Rodriguez, Searching for Sugar Man touches upon
some essential questions of how we value art and success. Even though Rodriguez
was a financial failure in America, he was a cultural phenomenon elsewhere
utterly unbeknownst to him. The money trail runs cold in Searching for Sugar Man, but the film shows that cultural relevancy
and personal impact trump celebrity and wealth. Through all the searches and
surprises related to Rodriguez, the result shows a man who never lost sight of himself
and retained his humble/modest lifestyle throughout his career.
While some documentaries and/or biographical features often
succumb to an over-elevation of their subject, Searching for Sugar Man succeeds because the myth of Rodriguez is
fully at its core. The subjects and interviewees embrace the lore surrounding
the man, if only because it helped keep his music alive. Even when the stories
are met with disbelief, they fuel passion and nostalgia.
Searching for Sugar
Man is a moving and inspiring documentary that pieces together the music,
life, and myth of a man through an impressive collage of archival footage and
interviews, all of which are set to a soundtrack of the artist’s original work.
The film gives Rodriguez a second chance at finding an audience, and the
mellow, insightful tunes will undoubtedly connect with viewers as they learn
the life of the man who penned them. Searching
for Sugar Man offers a fitting midpoint between two other music
documentaries of 2012: Marley and Charles Bradley: Soul of America. The
former doc makes an excellent portrait of a legendary recording artist, while
the latter looks at a man who has struggled throughout his life, only to get
his first album released at the age of 62. Searching
for Sugar Man shows Rodriguez’s life as equal parts fable and labour, but
his music could have had the impact of Marley’s if he had only caught a break.
Like Bradley, though, he finally gets a second chance during his formative
years and proves that no true talent should be written off early. If only William
Hung could inspire fans in Mozambique!
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
