A sensitive singer songwriter who sadly died too young

Eliott Smith was a talented singer songwriter, born in Omaha, lived in Dallas, fled to Portland in his mid-teens, became famous after his song Miss Misery was nominated for an Oscar, moved to New York, then to Los Angeles. He became seriously involved in drugs and alcohol touring and in L.A., and died at the age of 34 of two stab wounds to the chest that may or may not have been self-inflicted. This little documentary is just talking heads, music cuts and performance videos with too many poetic shots of Portland suburbs and big city skylines, but if it has the effect of introducing people to someone whose music will change their lives, as more than one of the speakers on screen insist, Heaven Adores You will be worthwhile. Consultation of a Wikipedia article suggests that Heaven Adores You is a somewhat prettied up version of the final years of the artist.

Yet the filmmakers have tracked down, by appearances, nearly everybody, family members, kids who played music with Eliott Smitt in Dallas, groups, recording people, producers, managers, girlfriends. There is also a lot of footage of Eliott Smith, of course. As a boy he was blond and athletic and cheerful-looking: it's hard to reconcile that with the dark, lined, hangdog face that peers out so often at later stages -- though the face lit up with a warm smile sometimes too, and one of his fellow musicians movingly speaks of dreaming of those times when Eliott looked over and smiled at him as they played. Ultimately this is a mystery and we don't get to the bottom of it. Smith seems to have been a lonely man.

Smith showed musical talent very early. The film doesn't delve much into his departure from Dallas at 14. He went to live with his father and escape from his stepfather, who abused him. The film also doesn't discuss the Portland music scene in general terms except to say it was much smaller then: surely it payed a key role? There is a lot of testimony by fellow musicians of that time. Changing his name from Steve to Eliott, the youth, who played a lot of instruments, also graduated from his Portland high school a National Merit Scholar; then graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass.; this is only briefly touched on. He was part of a busy punk rock scene in Portland after college, working as a baker then at the building trades for cash. The film threads us through the complicated list of musicians and bands and bars and recordings. Smith sang and played lead guitar with his band (the last one), Heatmiser, which he had formed while at Hampshire.

Then, who knows why, he made a radical shift to playing solo, mostly acoustic guitar, using a lot of overdubbing. With Heatmiser, he had sung at the top of his lungs, but from then on sang in a wispy voice with a sound that reminded people of Simon and Garfunkel, and this was the style that stuck. He clearly retained the grunge style of dress, but took on a different musical style and in which he expressed his musical imagination and emotional honesty. His success caused problems with Heatmiser, and in an interview he cites his "losing" both his band and his girlfriend as the reasons for moving to New York, to Brooklyn, a gesture that left a void in the Portland music scene and devastated some of his friends and musical colleagues there.

This film is intimate, meditative, celebratory, and emotional, but in some ways sketchy. For some basic facts to help one wade through a complicated bit of musical history one should read the Wikipedia article, which also cites a biography. Wikipedia stresses that Smith used alcohol and drugs as a youth and always suffered from depression; he mixed alcohol and antidepressants, not a recommended combination and fairly early showed signs of paranoia. Smith's collaboration with fellow Portland resident Gus Van Sant led to use of various songs in Good Will Hunting, and Smith's 1998 Oscars performance and Conan O'Brian and Letterman appearances put him in the limelight. He only lived five more years, and those years, by reports in the film, were a time of visible decline, forgotten lyrics, unfinished gigs, a look of premature age. The film skips some of the grimmer details of Smith's life from 2000 on, the full-on heroin addiction, crack smoking, paranoia, suicide threats, and regular attempts to overdose -- all included in Wikipedia.

Eliott Smith's legacy remains strong, with annual tributes; a big concert glimpsed in the closing credits celebrated the tenth anniversary of his death. During his life he was sometimes burdened by the emotionalism of his fans, who more than usual spoke of the huge meaning his songs had for them. He seems to be still finding new ones.

Heaven Adores You, 104 mins., debuts 5 May 2014 at the San Francisco International Film Festival, for which it was screened for this review, and plays at the Canadian Music Week Festival 10 May. Theatrical release 15 May 2014.

Trailer.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.