I first saw and discovered The National on their “High Violet” tour opening for Arcade Fire. Their music was deep, mournful, abstract and quietly intense (before becoming loudly intense), and you might suspect that Matt Berninger and company are really just brooding basket cases of emotion and darkness.
But at that show Berninger paused after a particularly riotous number and threw jellybeans into the audience. “Be sure to pick those up,” he said, “They each have a new MP3 track in them… by The Flaming Lips.” You don’t quite realize that they’re funny, quirky, aloof and more like their Midwestern selves than whatever you expect of a rock star.
The new rock-doc “Mistaken for Strangers” sheds light into this side of The National, but it does so by profiling the even bigger goofball behind the scenes, Director and Matt’s brother Tom Berninger. Though he resembles his tall, lanky and hipster brother Matt, Tom is shorter, fatter and has longer hair, and he could very well be portrayed in a movie by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
He’s made an oddball, meta and awkwardly funny documentary not unlike his own goofy personality. “Mistaken for Strangers” has more to do with Tom than the band itself, and in that way it gives us a more heartwarming portrait of The National than concert footage alone ever could.
Tom was invited along on The National’s World Tour for their 2010 album “High Violet,” and he took it upon himself to film the whole experience, even if that got in the way of the performance or his responsibilities as a roadie. We see him frantically scrambling to locate towels and water bottles he was supposed to fetch hours ago. At a Los Angeles show he’s misplaced the guest list and left Werner Herzog and the cast of “Lost” stranded at the door.
In interviews he asks the band obscure, frivolous questions and cuts away before they even give their confused, polite answer. “Do you carry your ID with you on stage?” “Where do you see The National in 50 years?” “How famous do you think you are?”
One wonders if lying on the editing room floor of “Mistaken for Strangers” is a separate, coherent movie about and including the band’s music. But Tom elects to edit together scraps of him making it, like requests for band members to stage establishing shots or act out dialogue and expressions in front of bathroom mirrors. His style is less documentary realism and closer to found footage horror, with Tom turning the camera around and shooting up at his own face.
Tom’s fourth wall breaking involvement and clips of him actually sitting in front of an editing room computer could reflect an ego and pretension in the hands of another filmmaker, but as Tom’s antics get more humiliating, he comes across as both pitiful and endearing. We laugh as Matt desperately asks his brother why there’s cereal and milk spilled on his bathroom floor, but Tom doesn’t hide the sadness behind the moment either.
Tom seems to have royally fucked up on tour, and he’s using this documentary as an act of redemption. But it’s almost as if he intentionally started making a fucked up movie and redeemed himself as he went. The film’s peculiar, formless beginning truly takes shape and meaning just as the character Tom gets his act together.
“Mistaken for Strangers” is a movie of depression, redemption, family and living in someone’s shadows. While we see it in Tom most prominently, it’s there in the Dessner Brothers’ less famous presence compared to Matt or in Matt’s glazed over eyes as he storms off stage. Tom doesn’t give the fan experience one might expect from a rock-doc, but it’s cleverly embedded in the film’s ether.
It most reminds me of the experimental documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” another movie that had a goofy filmmaker and subject of questionable capability. Both films are meta in just the right balance, and they reveal depths of artistry without actually profiling the artists at all.
3 ½ stars
It’s funny how much of this is NOT actually about the National, but in a way, that sort of works for anybody who hasn’t ever heard of them before. Good review Brian.