Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound (2009)
*** (out of 4)
This American Masters documentary takes a look at the life and career of folk singer Joan Baez. We start off learning about her pre-fame days then move onto her protest movement, the Civil Rights, her relationship with Dylan and then everything that followed. Not only do we get comments from Baez herself but Bob Dylan, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn are also on hand. I'm a die hard Dylan fan but I've always been interested in the work of Baez. In some ways I wish this documentary had focused more attention on her but it seems the main focus of the film is to highlight her relationship with Dylan and to show that she enjoyed to protest various things including Civil Rights and the Vietnam war. I did enjoy hearing some of the recent comments by Dylan because, to be quite frank, he never really did comment much on their relationship. He doesn't go into to much detail but something is better than nothing. She still seems upset that he pretty much threw her to the side back when his career started to take off. We get various clips of the two performing together both in the 60s as well as the Rolling Thunder Revue tour from 1975-76. Also included is some concert footage from a current tour. In the end, I think this is a good introduction to Baez but I'm sure there's a lot more to be told.