Jimi: All Is By My Side – 25/10/2014 @ The Watershed, Bristol.

There seems to be a growing demand to have iconic musicians on the big screen to have their life fictionalised, sugar coated and exploited for the masses. The life of an iconic star is usually so complex, eventful and full of conflicting accounts from various people involved that it is near impossible to make something that is a true reflection of the character and his/her life, music and legacy. Jimi Hendrix is one of those people who had a short lived career which was abruptly ended in a tragic overdose. During this time, he recorded and toured so much and has become over time one of the most influential musicians. Basically in my mind, no silver screen documentation of his life is going to do his life and legacy any justice. Writer and Director John Ridley has a well meaning attempt at presenting to us a personal account of Hendrix played by Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 from Outkast) and his involvement with Linda Kieth (Imogen Poots) and his long term girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell), but ends up making a messy and largely uninteresting interpretation of such an interesting and enigmatic musician.

I would like to draw your attention to the real life Kathy Etchingham’s review on this film http://www.kathyetchingham.com/. Here she claims that much of the events which unfold in this film did not happen. The most notable example being the scene where Hendrix beats up Kathy with a phone in a pub in front of many witnesses. It seems that the researchers did not even bother to contact Kathy Etchingham for any kind of research and instead defamed her character, portraying her as the mad, jealous girlfriend who takes a fictional overdose for dramatic purposes. I know full well that  stories like this are largely fictionalised for dramatic purposes, but in this case, the truth would have sufficed. Must a film have to include domestic abuse to keep viewers entertained? Also, there are characters which Hendrix meets for a philosophical discussion about race and equality. A character named Ida (who is a fictional person) leads Hendrix to Michael X, a civil rights activist, to try and get Hendrix involved in this scene. I think this never happened and was  part of a narrative contrivance to illustrate Hendrix’ views of absolute equality which transcends race. Also to slip in his well known quote ‘Once the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace’ (Although it is paraphrased in the film).

Hendrix is portrayed as a softly spoken and shy person with a rare gift he initially never new he possessed. It takes Linda Keith to point this out to him when she sees him perform in empty clubs as part of a backing band. It turns out she is in love with Hendrix, but it is a love that never happens as he chooses Kathy instead. I think that Kathy Etchingham rightly points out in her review that we never see Hendrix tour the UK or Europe, instead we just see him as a ‘mumbling mystic’.

The music rights were not obtained for this movie, so when we see Hendrix perform, we just get random blues jams instead of the familiar and influential songs which defined a generation. I think without the inclusion of his music, they were trying to make a film about Hendrix as a person, but for a man who was defined by his influential music, it was such a let down that non of it was included. It was more or less just a rise to fame account of Hendrix which ends at his trip to Monterey Festival, a performance which apparently sealed his fame.

Andre Benjamin gives a good performance as he does get the mannerisms and the stage performance right, but I think the whole project is largely pointless. I think there should have been a documentary made instead with archive footage and interviews with people who new him. I find they generally work better than film dramatizations.