How much courage does it take to stand up once more, when you fall over and over again?
This Monday night before sleep, I watched the film named as the same as the title of this article.
It’s because I accidentally saw the film review while I was searching for some information about ordering the High Violet expanded edition CDs. I saw a traditional Chinese review of the film written by a Taiwanese film critic columnist. It was at that time I just knew Matt has a younger brother Tom who has made this film. I was spoiled that it's not a documentary centrally about The National band’s touring in 2010 for the album, but about Tom’s experience as a touring staff “Roadie” along the way and the whole process of making this documentary. He planned to film a documentary about this tour and The National, but it turned out to be about the brotherhood between him and Matt. Just seeing the story plot and its movie poster makes me want to know about Tom, this mysterious man and his connection with Matt, and the Matt inside his camera/eyes.
At first, the movie starts with Tom asking Matt some random question and Matt was questioning whether Tom had even prepared to write down the questions that he’s gonna ask for the documentary. Then it cuts to serial news video clips about The National’s commercial success in 2010 when releasing the album High Violet, and there’s an interview in which the host said to Matt that he’s the only one who does not have a brother in the band (the other four members are two sets of brothers). And Matt replied he does have a brother. “He’s nine years younger and lives in Cincinnati”. Then the host asked him how his brother thinks about his band, and he thought for about two or three seconds and replied “That’s a good… I don’t think he does like it that much actually. He’s more like a metalhead, so… I think he thinks indie rock is pretentious bullshit”. Yeah, later, if you watched the film, you’ll know this younger brother Matt mentioned about self-introduced himself that he’s also keen on creating horror films and making artworks of violent aesthetics. It seems he has a completely unalike temperament to Matt. I thought this kind of brother only exist in fiction or movie, that two people are literally drastically different.
At the beginning of the film I was just amused to see how the whole journey started with Tom’s self-filming (exactly just with a small hand-holding video camera) and the funny shots he took for each band member (asking them to do some weird action, saying that it’s for their first shot in the movie; bringing up some strange questions the band members even felt awkward to respond). The hilarious atmosphere created by Tom as the first-person storyteller and camera-holder makes it so fun to watch. I can feel Tom is a very humorous person. But as the movie goes further, I can see there’s a sense of comparison through cameras between Tom himself and Matt: his brother seems that glaring on the stage with the band, becoming a nationwide famous rock star, and there’re so many people come to see the concert and adore the band, while he’s in his thirties and still lives with his parents, though making arts but hadn’t accomplished something “very successful”. He thinks he’s here only because he’s the brother of Matt. And during the tour, he was not qualified to complete his job and messed things up (but I have to say here, I think Tom tried his best to do it well, it is indeed a tiring and difficult job). In one scene alone, he was nearly crying and saying to himself “I even don’t know what I’m doing here”. There were also times his immature behavior made Matt annoyed. In the middle, he got fired by the tour manager.
Later in the film, Tom started to work on this documentary. After the tour finished, Matt invited him to his New York house to finish the movie. Tom wrote each scene’s content filmed in different color’s post-its, representing different atmospheres or meanings for every scene (pink ones are for scenes on the road, blue ones are the sad scenes, and purple ones represent band member’s scenes…). He posted them all on the wall for shots editing reference. At that time, there were no red ones.
What touches me most in this film is Tom’s genuine reactions in front of his camera. He showed all his fragile, unbearable, sensitive, but real side. Like after he was fired, he recorded the scene in which he was drinking, wearing headphones, and listening to the music miserably in the tour bus alone, while Matt was surrounded by crowds of people singing onstage; and in the scene where he recorded himself that he was crying for the accidental technical problem happened during movie (first edited version)’s pre-screening, heartbrokenly saying “I just want to do some good… For him, for the band, to believe me… As well, for myself”. It was that feeling of wanting to make his older brother satisfied with him but failing that moved me and let me sympathized with it.
He then wiped his tears and grabbed the camera to finish recording. And suddenly, the shot changed to another scene where he started to film the post-its stuck on the wall with firm eyes. He went back to work on the movie again and wrote more post-its. This time, he wrote red ones, for representing all the main scenes that we later saw in the final edited version’s documentary: “Tom fucks up”, “Tom gets fired”, “Tom failed to screen”… Here he restarted production of the film, and interspersed the footage of the interview with Matt about the first performance of The National (when the band first started, there was no one coming to watch their performance for a long time). I think it was where he reconciled with his brother. The “success” everyone has put in a lot of hard work from the beginning and kept hope after failing again and again for it. There’s no shortcut to it. Many are still looking for their lives and struggling, just like Tom, and I’m also one of them too. There’s no one born to be “successful” without any heartbreaking and struggle. Tom just needs to wait until his time comes, and have a little more confidence and faith in himself. Until then, he finally sorted out all the scenes for this film and made it.
I can see it’s a film actually about Tom himself, and about Matt and him, which the whole movie is for. It’s full of his deepest love for his brother, even if there’re quarreling and scolding (more like lessoning) scenes between Matt and him. I saw there were lots of shots portraying Matt offstage. Instead of the one who’s a little unhinged performing onstage, Matt offstage is like a rigorous but in the meanwhile kindly father to Tom, whenever Tom languishes, he’s telling him to pull out of the feeling of falling over and not to just paralyze for it and stuck in it, and fake it to the end. I like that Tom mentioned the nightmare Matt once had told him: there was a crazy person on street chasing Matt, but Matt dreamed that Tom came out of nowhere with an axe and just axed that crazy person. “Having an older brother like Matt, it sucks, but it’s just that it made me realize that my brother’s seeing something in me that I sometimes don’t see in myself”, Tom recalled it and said this emotionally. Although they were once so alienated, they are the truly “mistaken for strangers”.
Though Tom is a metalhead, but he used a lot of The National’s background music in this documentary just right. I think from now on, whenever I listen to the High Violet album, I’ll think of Tom, who at the end of the movie is wearing the deep purple security T-shirt, holding the long microphone cable for Matt to walk through the concert stadium singing Terrible Love, and eventually helping him be back onstage by stepping on his shoulder. My dear Tom, you’re that awesome and gorgeous too, let’s just keep going and never give up.