Where Does a Body End?

source: Where Does a Body End?

The first 80 mins of this are a really interesting profile of the early to mid stage band (albeit without too many revelations). The second 80 mins could be trimmed by ~50% or more. It devolves somewhat into snippets of live versions of long atmospheric songs interspersed by meaningless comments from fans. The major issue here is that by cutting up the long songs they lose all impact and cohesion. I found the comments from random fans at gigs odd to include in the main edit, and the comments from 'celebs' especially in the 2nd half had little insight - all a bit fanboy/hero worship. I think more exploration into what was driving the band members to produce the 'comeback' albums, what it meant to them, personal experiences from the studio/road, how it fitted in to current trends or... why they eventually became popular with totally inaccessible music - all would've been much more interesting. These 4 albums are not documented separately like the earlier records - and we lose focus on the development from one record to the next. It all blurs into one with not much to say. In summary, watch it for the history but... expect to lose interest second half.

This is a wonderful document of the band Swans, particularly for fans of the band. Unfortunately, with the source material available, it could have been so much more, which is slightly disappointing. The band have a magnificent story, one of overcoming failure after failure, not to mention constantly reinventing themselves even while staying true to the elements of their sound that made them unique in the first place. I think the biggest problem here lies in the film's editing: snippets of songs play for an annoyingly short time in between interviews, Michael Gira's childhood is strangely only explored after talking about the band's first few albums, and the part that documents the band's reunion and newfound success drags on without touching on individual albums or really exploring what is was that lead to them finally finding this success. These are minor complaints but they do detract from the experience, especially as I think there was a lot of potential here to attract new fans to the band, which I'm not sure this will. Regardless, if like me you are a fan of the group, you should absolutely love this. And I do want to congratulate Marco Porsia on getting this made in the first place, as it's clear this was a true labour of love. A great watch for any Swans fan!

Trailer—Where Does a Body End?

Where Does a Body End?