Moby Doc

I have seen music docs about bands or artists I knew little about, whose music I wasn’t necessarily a fan of, that were illuminating and fascinating (DIG!; METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER), which I would imagine, is the point of most music docs. I believe this is the first time I watched a documentary and found the subject so annoying vile that I find I don’t want to listen to his music ever again, despite having enjoyed it for a time. MOBY DOC is a clumsily surrealist, narcissistic, self-indulgent train wreck chronicling the musician’s rise from obscurity to superstardom; poverty to addiction; all to end up as an activist who proclaims to now believe in his own insignificance. It’s navel-gazing to the extreme to say the least. Narrated by Moby himself, it’s a lengthy, and fairly uninteresting reflection on his turbulent upbringing and admittedly iconic music as a punk artist to a ground-breaking solo electronica pioneer, with an overlong examination of his life as an addict that ultimately morphs into that of a vegan activist.

Moby started the film insisting that it won’t be just ‘another biopic about a weird musician,’ then makes exactly that… and not a very good one at that. The film suffers from a forced sense of experimentalism; there’s a moment in the film when Moby acknowledges that things have gotten too conventional for his liking, and states that ‘we’re now going to go back to being weird.’ The inclusion of David Lynch as one of the only talking head interviewees seems forced and out of place, and the famed director seems like he doesn’t quite know what he’s supposed to be doing in the film. It’s not that there isn’t a compelling story to tell about Moby’s life, the extreme rises and falls, and the ultimate zen-like transition into his latest persona — but given all that came before, it’s hard to imagine that this latest version of Moby will stick. All I can say is, ‘Ick,’ which is a shame, because like millions of other people, I used to fine Play to be a pretty great album. Now I don’t know when I will go back to listen to it again. 1 cat