This short film has similar themes with the film Searching for Sugar Man, which fans seek out an artist who was huge in South Africa without him ever really knowing it. In the case of this short we have an artist (Daniel C) who supposedly had a CD stolen from a locker which then was distributed and became popular – in particular in parts of Canada and Iceland. Nobody is sure who this Daniel C is nor what or who the object of his affection is in the tracks of love and longing. This documentary explores the myth and the music.
There is a fundamental problem I have with this short film and it is a fairly big one given that to watch it requires me to be interested in the man and his music. That problem is that the songs used as part of this documentary short are just awful; amateurish, corny and repetitive – indeed I found them so bad I had to Google to check this film was not a practical joke at my expense for trusting it to tell me the truth. The music made me less interested in who this guy was and more interested in why this music as popular (if indeed it is – the film doesn't give us too much other than a few very young people talking about it). This weakness at the heart of the film turned me off to it.
I like the idea of the animated sequences to explore the myths around Daniel C, but personally the animation was not to my taste and I found that the combination of it and the music just pushed me further away from the film. The talking heads are mostly dull – as I say the film gives you nothing to really put Daniel C's music in context – no stats, no detail and just a very few people talking about it. Maybe if you know the artist and like the music then this little film will tickle you as it explores the myths, but for me I just found it uninteresting and the fairly terrible music only served to make me less and less interested as it went on.
There is a fundamental problem I have with this short film and it is a fairly big one given that to watch it requires me to be interested in the man and his music. That problem is that the songs used as part of this documentary short are just awful; amateurish, corny and repetitive – indeed I found them so bad I had to Google to check this film was not a practical joke at my expense for trusting it to tell me the truth. The music made me less interested in who this guy was and more interested in why this music as popular (if indeed it is – the film doesn't give us too much other than a few very young people talking about it). This weakness at the heart of the film turned me off to it.
I like the idea of the animated sequences to explore the myths around Daniel C, but personally the animation was not to my taste and I found that the combination of it and the music just pushed me further away from the film. The talking heads are mostly dull – as I say the film gives you nothing to really put Daniel C's music in context – no stats, no detail and just a very few people talking about it. Maybe if you know the artist and like the music then this little film will tickle you as it explores the myths, but for me I just found it uninteresting and the fairly terrible music only served to make me less and less interested as it went on.
