The film explores the “acute suffering†and transcendent glory experienced by current and former members of King Crimson, allowing the audience an intimate and sometimes uncomfortable insight into the musicians’ experience as they confront life and death head on in the world’s most demanding rock band.
Thorsten Schütte’s film is a sharply edited and energetic celebration of Zappa through his public persona, allowing us to witness his shifting relationship with audiences. Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into the musician’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.