"Joan Baez I Am a Noise" affirms Baez’s activism and talent

Written by Diane Carson

Assured by Joan Baez that she committed to taking an unflinching look at her life, the good and the bad, directors Karen O’Connor and Miri Navasky began work on their documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise.” What they then discovered astonished them and Baez: a storage room holding home movies, photos, diaries, artwork, letters, and audio recordings.

Wanting to leave an honest legacy, Baez gave O’Connor and Navasky permission to tear into the hundreds of hours chronicling Baez’s unexplored, previously hidden life. Complementing judicious selections from all that, backstage and on stage footage juxtaposes Baez, in her 70s, performing on her magnificent farewell tour.

Throughout her career, Baez’s crystal clear voice and long-time activism testify to her social conscience—shots of her crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with MLK, Jr., her antiwar stand, striking moments of Baez’s extensive advocacy for social justice: all supported by her inspirational songs. “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” presents this legendary woman but is not a concert film. While it includes first-rate excerpts from decades of appearances, it is so much more. Accurately described as an “unusually intimate psychological portrait,” this truly profound look at Baez illuminates her grace and her gravitas.

As Baez said in exchanges with the audience after the SXSW screening of “Joan Baez I Am a Noise,” she placed a lot of trust in the directors and watched moments that, in her words with a laugh, “made my teeth curl.” From the outset, all three determined women forged ahead, and the result is a documentary as surprising as it is exhilarating for Baez fans (count me in.) The range and depth of Baez’s divergent public and private personas unfold through excerpts from (and some brief animation of) that treasure trove of found items and from recent interviews with Baez.

Throughout the survey of her life, Baez reflects on events: her young, spectacular success and fame; her relationships, including with Bob Dylan and anti-Vietnam activist husband David Harris; her love of but feelings of failure at being a mother (son Gabriel, who here plays percussion with her, notes her absences); awareness late in life of one sister’s sexual abuse; her eight-year addiction to quaaludes; and her involvement in multiple therapy sessions. Not discounting the benefits of her therapy, Baez described those sessions as “going through a tunnel.” However, she added that she now prefers to go to a tree as her preferred solace.

In expertly edited archival and present-day footage, “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” chronicles all the familiar facets of Bez’s life but, more importantly, her inner, unsettled emotional world. As she also told the audience, “I was better just one with two thousand than one on one.” As direct and accessible with the packed theater audience as she is in the film, when asked about her family’s extensive, brilliant talent (noted by O’Connor and Navasky), Baez again laughed and said, “The Lord is unfair. When he gave out creativity, we got a whole bunch.” Baez then encouraged everyone there to “keep creating. The world is short on art.”

Her calm communication and her tranquil composure inform this complex, expansive work, as if being just one person never sufficed for Baez. And yet, as accessible and transparent as Baez makes herself, she remains mysterious and elusive, slipping away even as we embrace her introspective courage and applaud her dazzling talent. “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” is now available. Check listings.