Week 10 Screening 1

The Devil And Daniel Johnston. 2005. Dir Jeff Feuerzeig.

The Devil And Daniel Johnston is a biographical documentary chronicling the life of artist and musician Daniel Johnston. The film uses first person interviews and authoritative materials such as home videos and tape recordings to narrate the story of his life. Perhaps due to his fame and the amount of people who came to know Johnston this film has many voices mixed into the commentary, they all stick closely to the narrative in what must have been a laborious editing process. The films narrative never becomes pointless and nearly every narrative point has corresponding authentic source material. This source material adds both to the polyphony of the narrative and the legitimacy of the story itself.

The many interviews are used as a ‘voice of god’, their authenticity is not questioned as they are placed over the footage they are narrating, but this gives the footage a particular slant. When interviews are placed over footage in this manner it appears that the interviewer is displaying the footage, as if they have ownership of what the footage itself means. The film is gravitates around the iconic infamy that Johnston acquired, due partially to his mental illness and partially to his substantial talent as a musician and artist. Johnston himself is never directly interviewed for the film; his extensive recordings are instead used and are snapshots of Johnston through time. Due to the amount of material that Johnston contributed to the film it takes on a nearly autobiographical tone, but the witness interviews give the footage another context than the one presented by Johnston himself.