By far the most powerful element is N'Dour's lone voice, a thing of high, pure beauty that feels at once ancient and new. When he sings, an otherwise earnestly conventional film becomes a vehicle of incantatory power.
Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (2009)
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work ![]()
Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:18
Rotten:3
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: It never gets close enough to its subject, and it's curiously light on music, but this documentary is nonetheless a long-overdue tribute to a brilliant musician.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating] for thematic elements and brief smoking
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Theatrical Release:Jun 12, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $32,598
Synopsis:
Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love is an uplifting, music-driven journey into the power of
one man’s voice to inspire global change. The film unfolds an extraordinary moment in the life...
Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love is an uplifting, music-driven journey into the power of
one man’s voice to inspire global change. The film unfolds an extraordinary moment in the life of
Youssou N’dour -- the best selling and most influential African pop artist of all time. The Grammy
Award-winning cultural ambassador has long been renown for bringing people of diverse nations and
backgrounds together through his collaborations with such musical superstars as Bono, Paul Simon
and Peter Gabriel -- and for rousing global audiences with his honey-like voice, electrifying rhythms
and impossibly catchy melodies. But when he releases his most daringly personal and spiritual album
yet, N’dour instead rocks his Muslim fans in Africa. Now, even as he garners accolades in the West,
N’dour must brave controversy and rejection at home as he sets out to win his audience back with the
sheer transcendent optimism of his music, which moves hips and feet but also hearts and minds.
As director Chai Vasarhelyi tracks N’dour’s emotional journey over two years -- filming his
ever-shifting life in Africa, Europe, and America -- she reveals why he has become an inspiration for
generations. He initially releases his album Egypt in the hopes of promoting a more tolerant face of
Islam. Yet, when his fellow Senegalese reject the album, and denounce it as blasphemous, he takes this
as a challenge to go deeper, to reach out to those who would attack him and to work even harder to use
the storytelling impact and infectious beats of his songs to unite a divided world. The resulting portrait
is not just of an incomparable musician turning his spiritual quest into art, but also that of a brave new
world in which pop culture now has equal power to incite fury and invite new connections.
Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love is the first feature-length documentary film by Chai
Vasarhelyi, who also acts as a producer on the film. A Groovy Griot Film In Association with 57th &
Irving Productions, the film is executive produced by Edward Tyler Nahem, Jennifer Millstone,
Patrick Morris, Jack Turner, Kathryn Tucker, and Miklos C.Vasarhelyi, and co-produced by Sarah
Price, Gwyn Welles, Scott Duncan, and Hugo Berkeley. The film’s cinematographers are Nick Doob
(From Mao to Mozart; an Academy Award winner ® for Best Documentary Feature), Jojo Pennebaker
( The War Room), six-time Emmy ® winner Scott Duncan (Olympic Games, Survivor), and Hugo
Berkeley. The film’s original score was composed by Emmy® winner Martin Davich (Trinity) and six
time Academy Award ® nominee James Newton Howard (Blood Diamond). --© Official Site
Starring: Youssou N'Dour
Starring: Youssou N'Dour
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Producer: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Composer: Martin Davich, James Newton Howard
Studio: Shadow Distribution
Reviews for Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love
This documentary by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi could have used more music for my taste, and fewer talking heads. But it’s absorbing all the same. N’Dour is the sort of humanitarian bridge that we need in a world so sharply divided.
Be sure to stay through the closing credits as the scenes of Senegalese life act as a captivating coda to a film pulsing with music and memory.
Youssou N'Dour is a beautiful film to watch as it unfolds the life of N'Dour and, by extension, the lives of millions of West Africans who are anonymous to many in the West.
When the music starts playing, it's easy to forgive the film's flaws.
N'Dour is the film's unstoppable force, handsome and radiating joy. He's the kind of performer who is larger than life but always seems like one of the family.
An inspiring and edifying cinematic exploration of the power of music and the soul of a big-hearted African Sufi singer who has used his exceptional talent and creativity to make a better world.
Although his movie often resembles the kind of promotional video one might find as an extra on a concert DVD, N'Dour in full throttle is a sight, and sound, to behold.
Love looks and sounds great, but in depicting N’Dour as a lofty symbol for music’s power to bridge worlds and inspire, it sometimes loses sight of the man.
While the rambling, repetitive look at his life off stage is unevenly edited, his music is gloriously heard and seamlessly presented to an appreciative global audience.
Documentary about a great world-music performer is colorful but also suffers from a certain blandness and repetitiveness. A pure concert movie with biographical interruptions would have been preferable.
A lively, soulful documentary that lacks sufficient insight into the life of Youssou N'Dour.
[Director] Vasarhelyi offers only generalities on the Egypt dispute and never really tells us about N'Dour the man.
The director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, is in thrall to her subject, and dewy-eyed accounts of pop stars, even those with as compelling a biography as Mr. N'Dour, tend to wear out their welcome.
Fans and newcomers to N'dour's music will be equally enthralled by the finely observed, patiently wrought documentary.
Though we see the same man throughout the bumpy tour captured here -- always calm, steady, faithful -- it's bound to prove an enlightening portrait for those who know him only as the guy who once worked with Peter Gabriel.
The performance excerpts, starting with the head-clearing invocational introduction, are by far the most interesting part of the show.
When the movie lets the music do the talking, you understand the singer’s determination to see the album through. Praise filtered through pop is never an easy sell, but such gorgeously transcendental expressions can’t -- and shouldn’t -- be ignored.
Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's passion for her devout Sufi Muslim subject blinds her to a need for shaping a coherent story in a puffy documentary that goes slack with gooey adulation more often than not.
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