Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story Of The Grateful Dead Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
November 18th, 2018
Of all the documentary subjects to focus on, musicians and bands has to be one of the toughest to navigate through. On one hand, you want to tell a complete story and present the subject fairly and completely. On the other hand, you want fans of the subject to enjoy themselves and find something in your documentary they haven’t seen before. The trick for the filmmaker is to teeter the line without going too far in one direction. For director Amir Bar-Lev and LONG STRANGE TRIP, it feels like he made a movie for Deadheads and not for people wanting a history lesson on The Grateful Dead.
I am not a Deadhead. In fact, before sitting down for four hours to watch LONG STRANGE TRIP, the only thing I recognized The Grateful Dead for is how much of an anomaly they are in the sense that they’re beloved by millions and sold out countless shows in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, yet only had one hit single with ‘Touch of Grey’ in the late 80’s. I was actually eager to learn more about the band and discover more of their music, the inspiration for the music and hear from true Deadheads what the allure of the band really was. Unfortunately, we didn’t really get that with LONG STRANGE TRIP.
Instead, we get a lot of psychedelic cut scenes, some clips from old monster movies and a scattering of concert footage that throws off what should have been a linear timeline. This is a four hour documentary that could have easily been three hours without the unnecessary footage. That’s even if we kept the archival concert footage. Another issue with the film is that it has zero focus. Interviews are cut in and the speaker goes off on a tangent that has little to do with the general subject we’re focused on. In the first part, there’s an attempt to establish the formation of the band and how they got gigs and it completely loses itself when the band decides to get high on LSD. That “trip” was a pivotal moment for the band and I completely understand that, but what lead up to that point and how did that change things for the band going forward? It’s unclear because the documentary is so scattered.
There’s hours of archival footage shown while the interviewers are talking and in general, seeing archival footage of bands is a good thing. But it has to have some sort of logic and reasoning to it. For example, don’t show a video of Jerry Garcia waving to the camera while you’re talking about Deadheads trading tapes of concerts. Things like that happened throughout LONG STRANGE TRIP and for someone that was genuinely trying to learn about the band, it was more frustrating than anything.
That said, if I knew everything about the band and loved them, LONG STRANGE TRIP would be a nice recap of the band and a chance to catch up with some surviving band members. I respect that and appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think it could have been told more efficiently and with better structure.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: The vast majority of LONG STRANGE TRIP is archival footage, so it’s tough to judge video quality. For the non-archival footage, the video looked crisp and clear.
Audio: The audio was fine.
Commentary with Amir Bar-Lev and John Walter: Commentaries to documentaries are tough to get through some times and this one is no exception. They do a good job keeping the track going, but it drags at times as they get distracted.
