REVIEWED - THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON: LIKE the comedy of Spike Milligan, the songs of Daniel Johnston, a 45- year-old West Virginian with a piercingly reedy timbre, could be viewed less as art than as disturbing manifestations of their creator's mental instability. The music's appeal is tied up with our unease at being allowed to listen to it.
Yes, he conjures up powerful images and insidious, twisty melodies, but Johnston's songs, to an even greater extent than those of Syd Barrett, work most powerfully as aural distillations of the singer's psychological disorder.
With that in mind, one could be forgiven for approaching Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary with some caution. The Devil and Daniel Johnston could, in the wrong hands, have easily turned into a distasteful freak show. As it happens, the film, though frequently disturbing, treats its subject with dignity and sympathy.
Feuerzeig does not shirk from detailing the many disturbing incidents that have resulted from Johnston's extreme bi-polar disorder. He fires his faithful agent when major record labels, spurred by the interest of such voguish Johnston fans as Kurt Cobain, begin circling with intent to sign. He attacks his father, a pilot in the second World War, when the old man is flying him back from a gig. He bursts into a stranger's house and forces her to jump out the window. But the film, taking care to interview all available interested parties, presents these episodes as variously sized tragedies rather than colourful anecdotes. An atmosphere of fusty melancholy hangs over the entire enterprise.
At high school, Johnston, the child of conservative Christian parents, began expressing himself through any media that came to hand. He made spoken-word cassette tapes. He drew bizarre cartoons featuring ambulatory eyeballs and single-minded ducks. He shot films with a super-8mm camera. But it was his music that eventually attracted attention.
While recuperating in Austin, Texas, after getting beaten up by another employee of the circus with which he was travelling, Daniel fell among that unusually hip town's musical bohemians. Cult success followed.
The ups (a major-label debut) and downs (that record's commercial failure) of Johnston's career are told with great economy. But the main reason to watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston is for the moving personal story at its heart.
Daniel's father, who breaks down more than once on camera, eventually emerges as the film's hero. He seems baffled that people might want to buy Johnston's records or paintings - the art now fetches small fortunes - but poignantly realises that the capital generated may help protect his fragile son when he is eventually left alone. Anybody feeling morally divided about buying one of Daniel's odd records might want to keep that in mind.
