Miss Americana
Lana Wilson’s loving valentine to the mega-selling pop star Taylor Swift is perhaps too careful not to offend its subject.
Taylor Swift is a smart, attractive and engaging entertainer, so it stands to reason that Miss Americana makes for satisfying entertainment. We witness Taylor, aged six, opening a guitar for her birthday and declaring “I – am – happy!” We witness her aged 13, singing her little heart out, before embarking on a career that sees her become the only artist in history to have five separate albums sell over a million copies in a single week. We are given mouth-watering details of how she used to write with a quill and ink and, eventually, how she battled and overcame anorexia. And she certainly gives good quote (“I want to wear pink and I want to tell you how I feel about politics”). As pop docs go, it gives good value, if only because Taylor Swift is such an appealing subject. She appears honest, politically engaged, appropriately outraged and is articulate. She starts out saying that, “those pats on the head were all I lived for” and ends up sticking her neck out against the Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn, who’s really “Trump in a wig.”
However, it’s what we don’t see that is more problematic, as Miss Americana begins to feel like a feature-length promotional video for the star. Her family life remains largely a mystery, although we are told that one parent, Andrea, has been battling cancer. The familiar trauma of death by social media is addressed, at one point forcing the singer to disappear from public view for a year. But the documentary is strangely anodyne, the omnipresent camera very much an accessory to her glory, a collaborative co-star. There are no on-screen meltdowns, no family rows or even a boyfriend to profess his love, of which there have been many (Calvin Harris, Taylor Lautner, Tom Hiddleston and Joe Alwyn are swept under the carpet).
As standard hagiography, Miss Americana is a slick tribute, although her songwriting process is only touched on, while the rest just feels desperately safe. Anything romantic is strictly off limits, give or take the fan who proposes to his girlfriend in front of her (how could the girl refuse, with Taylor looking on?), and her standing as a liberal, positive role model is forcibly apparent. Yet considering how well-rounded an entertainer Taylor Swift is, it’s odd that the film forgets to mention she is also a movie star. Maybe somebody in the back office was afraid someone might mention Cats.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Featuring Taylor Swift, Andrea Swift, Scott Swift, Joel Little, Tree Paine, Brendon Urie; archive footage: Joe Alwyn, Beyoncé, Marsha Blackburn, Jimmy Fallon, Whoopi Goldberg, Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston, Taylor Lautner, David Letterman, Harry Styles, Kitty Swift, Kanye West, etc.
Dir Lana Wilson, Pro Morgan Neville, Caitrin Rogers and Christine O'Malley, Ph Emily Topper, Ed Paul Marchand, Greg O’Toole, Lee Rosch, Lindsay Utz and Jason Zeldes, Music Alex Somers.
Tremolo Productions-Netflix.
85 mins. USA. 2020. UK and US Rel: 31 January 2020. Cert. 15.
