She Has Overcome: Joan Baez I Am a Noise

By Elias Savada.

A lovely curtain call, offering time for Joan to frame how she ultimately crushed her life-long demons. It’s a heartbreaking journey into the horrifying past and a heartwarming walk into a future of forgiveness.”

I always envisioned this legendary folk musician and activist as the Baby Boomer generation’s Joan of Arc. So, Saint Joan Baez? Ever since she became one the 1960s most vocal rights advocates, she earned patron saint stripes in my book. If you didn’t live through most of those same 60-plus years, you can get a great grasp of what she’s been all about, courtesy of Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle, who have collectively directed (with Navasky and O’Connor also producing, and O’Boyle editing) this ode to greatness.

Joan Baez I Am a Noise begins with a truncated, yet fierce rendition of Oh, Freedom during her teens. Over the next nearly two hours you’ll learn that the folk singer’s own independence came with a great deal of emotional baggage. With Baez as the film’s now calm, moral center, she guides us through the turmoil that enveloped much of her life. She has survived.

Baez, realizing how age (79 during the filming, 82 now) has affected her singing, uses the film as a celebration of her final tour (sadly with only barebone footage of her concerts), as she comes to understand that a performing career spanning six decades is ending, while her life welcomes more days relaxing in the warm California sun at her sprawling home.

No, don’t expect a lot of music – snippets here and there – with more provided by Sarah Lynch’s moving score. This journey of the soul entrancingly drifts back to the family’s earlier nomadic travels via the wealth of finely curated archival material, much of it preserved by the singer – voice cassette tapes, photographs, radio & television broadcasts, home movies, her journals and letters, many now unboxed and ready for your viewing and listening pleasure. The filmmakers also add animations of the drawings and writings by a 13-year-old Joanie, from which the film garners its title. I Am a Noise’s story floats back and forth in time, with earlier filmed commentary by the singer and her late sister Pauline Baez Bryan (who died in 2016), offering some lovely insights.

Their late mom talks frankly about Joan’s worries (not for herself, but for the less fortunate in this world), with the singer continuing the thread – that her gastrointestinal issues, anxiety attacks, and insomnia dating back to her at age 8 were physical manifestations of emotional problems (feelings of inadequacy and inferiority) that needed help from a psychiatrist. Decades later, the cure is obvious.

Civil rights also plays a crucial part of this film’s examination…. It’s a heartfelt yet melancholy affair with Baez reminding her fans that the fight still isn’t won.”

Some of her earliest performances make the cut from nightclubs, the Newport Folk Festival (where her career began with unexpected overnight success), and many media appearances. It touches on various subjects and decidedly veers away from a straight chronological and biographical approach, yet constantly connecting with her family, with which Joan had several estranged relationships. Her younger sister was Mimi, who also became a successful singer-songwriter herself with her husband as Richard and Mimi Fariña, until his unfortunate death in 1966. Mimi, like Pauline, died from cancer.

Of course, fame was the name of the game. Baez’s problem was the inability to determine its fickleness. Her relationship with Bob Dylan, who publicly broke up with Baez in 1965 – a dumping uncompromisingly documented in the Don’t Look Back footage in the film – gets the warts and all treatment. More than a half-century later, she reflects on those golden days, “We had a wonderful time together.” Then, turning to the camera, she offers a big “Hi” to Bobby.

The fight for civil rights also plays a crucial part of this film’s examination – marching on Alabama (and in Washington) with Martin Luther King in 1965, then revisiting the scene during her farewell tour to play at the Walton Theater in Selma. It’s a heartfelt yet melancholy affair with Baez reminding her fans that the fight still isn’t won.

The second hour starts with one of America’s skeletons in the closet – Vietnam. Baez was an active and determined anti-war protestor, and her husband, for just a moment in her life, was David Harris, a fellow activist and later journalist. They were in love, and often spent time away from each other – in prison for their civil disobedience efforts. “Nothing makes sense to me but you, me and the revolution,” she penned to him during one of those incarcerations.

The film excels by looking deeper into the person who is Joan Baez. Her innermost thoughts tear away the veneer of the folk (music) hero and exposes a person with tremendous vulnerabilities. That Baez gave her approval to this work (and that the directors chose their material so wisely) makes this a more relatable film, albeit at the cost of those fans watching who might expect more concert matter. The bittersweet moments reveal her deep understanding of her disjointed place in the world (and her great penmanship).

Although her neuroses didn’t bode well with David. “He was too young, and I was too crazy,” she did later make peace with her son, Gabriel (seen performing with her during the Fare Thee Well tour).

Joan Baez I Am a Noise is a lovely curtain call, offering time for Joan to frame how she ultimately crushed her life-long demons. It’s a heartbreaking journey into the horrifying past and a heartwarming walk into a future of forgiveness.

Disclaimer: I did copyright research for this film but had no creative input into its making.

Elias Savada is a movie copyright researcher, critic, craft beer geek, and avid genealogist based in Bethesda, Maryland. He helps program the Spooky Movie International Movie Film Festival, and previously reviewed for Film Threat and Nitrate Online. He is an executive producer of the horror film German Angst and the documentary Nuts! He co-authored, with David J. Skal, Dark Carnival: the Secret World of Tod Browning (a revised edition will be published by Centipede Press).