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Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind begins with the death of a music producer, so it makes sense that the film ruminates on a supposedly dead musical genre. Folk music is a fit for Guest’s idiosyncratic eye, with the nuances in musicality or artistic personalities making easy fodder for his world of self-serious oddballs. Wind explores the breadth of the folk genre in three distinct groups: the narrative-based acoustics of The Folksmen, the chearfully disposed harmonies of The New Main Street Singers, and the placid romanticism of duo Mitch and Mickey. Though the film plays these characters with typical Guest behavioral farce, it does take their music seriously...
It helps that some of this music is believable from the era and stand alone brilliantly. And we get to enjoy it all in one big concert as a finale, a tribute to the passing of that producer that influenced their careers. Off-stage, the film itself is populated with non-performing characters either indifferent towards the genre or outright expressing their loathing for it. You can imagine plenty of Guest fans arriving to the film agreeing and primed to laugh at such a sincere (and therefore: silly) style of music, and likely be surprised that Wind’s music is delightful.
The Folksmen originated as a joke warm-up band for when Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer toured as Spinal Tap. Their scenes play as a nod to that influential comedy, but also serve to show this band’s ego as well. For the Folksman, the music never died and there’s an undercurrent of bitterness towards sell-outs like The New Main Street Singers. Their songs tell stories, but with a winking style not unlike what they mock.
The foundation for all Guest characters is that they take themselves too seriously, and its maybe The Folksmen that suffers the most on that front here. No wonder their hit “Old Joe’s Place” is the jokiest in their lineup, the one they are most reticent to do but the audience wants the most. They’re most beloved when they set the ego aside.
The New Main Street Singers are like the middle-aged Menudo of the folk scene, a revolving door of nine performers, each with some kind of checkered or painful past. Led by Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, and Parker Posey, this group is all smiles in cult-like fashion - so of course Lynch and Higgins are actual cult members (W.I.N.C. *wink*). Guest plays up their generic blandness for comic effect, but you can see what effect that kind of sunniness might have on this group of saved children and how the group poses a way of life to be adapted. The cult is the music itself.
For all of the naysaying lobbed at the “toothpaste commercial” New Main Street Singers, their version of “Never Did No Wanderin’” is the winner against The Folksmen’s. Their powerhouse harmonies and crisp phrasing turn the tune into something like the expansive landscape it describes, while The Folksmen have a more introspective, less rousing beauty. If you groan or giggle at their arch optimism beforehand, this number show’s their ability to rip the roof off the building. It’s antiseptic as ever, but still pretty friggin’ great.
But the film’s melodic heart belongs to Mitch and Mickey, played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. “A Kiss At The End of the Rainbow” is the one tune that inspires reverence from the other artists, the audience, and even the skeptics. What works so beautifully about this number is how it has evolved with Mitch and Mickey just like enduring classic songs develop new meaning for listeners over time. The closest thing Wind has for a plot-forwarding narrative is whether or not they will recreate the storied kiss in this number as the performed it while in love. The final kiss of reconciliation is so touching every time on rewatch, carrying decades of baggage lifted in a moment.
Obviously this was a cut for time, but isn’t it kind of crap that in the concert Mitch and Mickey only get to do one number even though they’re the audience favorite? You get a hint of their “When You’re Next to Me” earlier in the film, but it’s just as much of a gem and highlights O’Hara and Levy’s vocals even better.
“Kiss” landed the film an Original Song nomination, though the title track could have been equally as worthy. Guest films go down as bitter pills no matter how funny, so Wind stands aside for its heartfelt uplift. That usual Guestian conclusion disappointment or selling out is more minor here thanks to a rousing final number that’s triumphant for all without sacrificing his signature point of view. And it ends on a sex joke, so there’s that.
PS: apologies for leaving out Jennifer Coolidge’s open-mouthed humming as a crucial musical number for the film.
A Mighty Wind is now streaming on Hulu!
Previously on Soundtracking:
Drive
Big Little Lies
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Best Worst Thing...
Sister Act
American Honey