Cinema verité icon Albert Maysles captures the best in very Gypsy music while highlighting the diversity of the Romani people in this documentary tracing the World Music Institute's Gypsy Caravan six-week concert tour across North America. Featuring five bands from four countries, the Gypsy Caravan showcases a variety of musical styles ranging from flamenco to Indian folk, Romanian violin, Raga, and jazz. The result is a celebration of song and dance that's sure to thrill music lovers of all
ages and backgrounds. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The emphasis remains on the personal stories of the players themselves who, for all their backstage squabbling, identify more with each other than any of the countries in which they've settled.
If music were all, Gypsy Caravan would be amazing. As is, it's worth seeing, but you may get frustrated at the way Dellal raises provocative questions about ancestry and prejudice...
Gypsy Caravan succeeds in its primary goal to open ears and minds to Roma music, accurately described as being about 'the rhythm, the language, the feeling.'
Dellal's documentary often seems like a cleaned-up, homogenized version of the chaotic Roma world presented by Gatlif, Kusturica, et al. But even toned down and packaged, the music itself has the power to thrill.
The energy is electric, the camerawork crisp and colourful, the editing note-perfect. . . . for the Roma, music sounds the notes of a harsh, maligned cultural history, making them all the more unforgettable while demanding remembrance, even awe.
Gypsy Caravan - When the Road Bends evokes the US tour of Roma musicians whose astonishing diversity ranges from the Indian group with their bejewelled drag dancer to oompah-based Romanians.
So long seen as ragged leftovers from an older historical epoch, the Roma turn out to be a modern people who have a lot to teach over-developed societies about what it means to be human.
Blessed with a wealth of characters, moving stories and roof-raising performances, Gypsy Caravan is as rich as the music it promotes. Fans of Buena Vista should definitely join the club.
It's a slow, sometimes grating process for an hour or so, but once everyone wises up to their shared heritage, a euphoric celebration of what it means to be a gypsy takes flight.
[Dellal's] attempts to 'straighten' the narrative through exposition disguised as the walkie-talkie messages of an unseen stage manager, however, are distractingly ham-handed.
(Johnny Depp is in this...?) Anyway, this was a nice documentary/musical about the lives of various Gypsy band members as they make their way to the Gypsy Caravan. It's well made and the music is amazing.
This is a beautiful film, one of the best documentaries of this sub-genre (music, stranger in a strange land) - and though it spends a lot of time in the "comfort zone", it's always beautiful. Of course, the music and the subjects are very engaging, so it's easy to love.
December 2, 2007
G Z
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