“Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune”

Nice THR review of a new documentary by filmmaker Ken Bowser: Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune. The lede:

Kenneth Bowser’s terrific documentary is a poignant portrait of an uncompromising artist who, despite a struggle with depression that eventually led to his suicide at age 35, believed in the power of music as a tool for social and political change.

An excerpt:

While the singer-songwriters most associated with the 1960s folk movement tend to be names such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Bowser presents a persuasive case that Phil Ochs was a more hardcore political agitator than any of them.

He charts the subject’s life and career via an expertly assembled wealth of archival news and performance footage. Further insight comes from interviews with contemporaries including Baez, Seeger and Tom Hayden, and admirers such as Sean Penn, Billy Bragg and Christopher Hitchens.

But despite its personal focus, one of the broader strengths of the documentary is its probing analysis of the protest movement, from civil rights through Vietnam. The film is more illuminating in this overview than in its intimate details of the unraveling of Ochs’ life through manic depression, schizophrenic tendencies and alcoholism. But that arguably is less a shortcoming than an inevitable reflection of the unknowable path of bipolar disorder.

Without pushing the thesis too hard, Bowser suggests that Ochs’ downward spiral was part of his crushing sense of general disillusionment. That descent began with the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations and the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago, and continued through the Kent State shootings and political rise of Richard Nixon.

His brother and manager Michael Ochs (one of the film’s producers) calls the Vietnam War “the last dragon to be slain,” and Phil Ochs’ dark mood during what should have been a celebratory “War is Over” concert in Central Park indicates his frustration with the movement’s failings.

Whether or not it was the intention of Bowser’s narrative, a parallel emerges between the ’60s and present-day America in the painful transition during President Obama’s term in office from hope and idealism to the current disenchantment and bitter divisiveness.

The movie trailer:

Ochs performing the doc’s title song at “The Bitter End”:

The movie’s IMDB website.

For more of the Hollywood Reporter review, go here.

The movie opens today.

I learned how to play the guitar as a youth analyzing songs by Bob Dylan, Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot — and Phil Ochs. He was an incredible talent and his life-story is a compelling one. Go see Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune.

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