In short: In a Silent Way (2020)

Even though there are some moments when I think this music documentary by Belgian director Gwenaël Brees gets a bit carried away with a very French artsy way of crawling up one’s own arse – and that despite being Belgian - there’s much more to admire here than to roll one’s eyes at, even if you’re a cynical old bastard like me.

At the very least, you have to admire the special kind of guts and drive it takes to make a documentary about Talk Talk and Mark Hollis when most of the subjects of your movie – whose works are clearly as important to the filmmaker as a godhood to a religious person – won’t talk to you, and even go as far as to lawyer up so you don’t use any of their music in this film about their music, fair use be damned. Brees not only does not let this distract him from his love for the music (I don’t think I could have been so relaxed) but seems to take this as an invitation to shape his film differently from other music documentaries (watching this, I can’t help but believe he’d done that in any case) and to try to approach his subject with methods that parallel the way the later Talk Talk operated.

So the film turns into a travelogue, trying to understand music we never get to hear in the movie through the places that – perhaps - shaped Hollis, chance encounters with contemporaries, and a handful of interviews with the few people out of Talk Talk’s artistic bubble willing to talk. Sometimes, this approach does get a bit precious for my tastes, but more often than not, Brees manages to broaden the possibility space surrounding the music he’s talking about, showing different approaches to understanding and living with music that just might open up for his viewers as well.