DVD Review: Ashes of American Flags

Your band's mileage may vary, but for Wilco, the road seems like home. In a fit of wistfulness, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy even permits himself to gently revise his band's history. He says that from the start, Wilco hoped to get just one gig in Chicago. And after that, maybe just one gig up the road in St. Louis. And maybe a show in Columbus. And so on. This is silly, of course: Uncle Tupelo, the band from which Wilco was born, achieved the kind of sensational popularity most bands strive for their entire careers. Wilco was guaranteed to garner some of that fanbase from the start. Tweedy's musing is harmless as mythology goes; you might even say it serves to show that the band's experience on the road matters.

And matter it does. Now approaching, what, 45? 50?, many of the members are starting to feel the road. Guitarist Nels Cline actually gives himself whiplash on a regular basis from rocking out so hard (seriously). He mentions something in the movie about his vertebrae fusing, too. Drummer Glenn Kotche's hands are always sore and bleeding. Tweedy, though, seems blissfully free of the migraine that made him sick on Heart. (What a drag it is. . . .)

Though the personal narratives are usually the draw for these kinds of behind-the-scenes films, the strength of Ashes is the concert footage. To arrive at the footage—which won best cinematography at the Big Sky Film Festival—Canty and Green threw as many cameras at Wilco as the band would allow (Canty said that they recorded using eight cameras). The cinematography is more angular than you might imagine a film about Wilco looking. Early into the film, there is a close-in shot of Cline as he blisters through a guitar solo. The tight frame captures only Cline's strumming hand, and guitar and hand look like nothing so much as a furiously vibrating bomb.

Canty and Girls Against Boys's Eli Janney, who recorded the concert audio, deserve a nod for creating the incredibly textured document that is the film's sound. Softer numbers like "Ashes of American Flags" and "War on War" come across as crisp but not forced. Ashes successfully navigates the tension between live show and mixed record that you find in concert films: a friend of mine agreed that it felt odd not to applaud after each song. Canty will tell you that Wilco is just that good, and that's certainly true. Be that as it may, a lot of good decisions went into the sound production.

Weird as it sounds, the surpassing feature of Ashes of American Flags is America itself. Canty and Green picked shows at five stellar, historic venues, from Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa to the 9:30 Club right here in the District Of. And as the members of America's greatest folk band travel through dilapidated Southern urban centers, stopping at nearly anachronistic venues like Tipitina's in New Orleans, they muse about the nature of representative art in America and the incalculable impact of big-box chains on the American Gothic. As Tweedy sings in the titular song, "I wonder why we listen to poets/ When nobody gives a fuck."

A rich document, if not exactly a hardcore journalistic investigation. On the documentary front, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart draws the harder truth about collaboration and art. But Ashes of American Flags is chock full of the art itself.

» The Ashes of American Flags DVD is available through Nonesuch and independent retailers now. Starting tomorrow, the DVD is available through iTunes, Amazon, and chain retailers. If you buy the DVD today, you will receive a free video download of the band performing "Monday."