The future is unwritten

""Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten " is one artist's moving tribute to another: director Julien Temple's poetic evocation of the life of punk's greatest troubadour. Using archival footage, contemporary interviews and material from the former Clash frontman's own notebooks (lyrics, meditations and even doodles), Temple creates a fluid audiovisual pastiche of an extraordinary life. There's always slightly less than what we want, but that's testament to the richness of the content, which also includes heartfelt testimony from those who knew and appreciated Strummer, who died in 2002, including former bandmates Mick Jones and Topper Headon. In a way, the movie is like one of Strummer's songs: intensely personal and private, insightful yet elusive".

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"The usual rock-doc motifs are there: trouble with management; drug problems; tensions between Mr. Strummer and Mick Jones, the band’s other guitarist and creative force. Once the Clash has broken up, in the mid-1980s, there is a long denouement - for me, I guess it’s called adulthood - during which both Mr. Strummer’s career and Mr. Temple’s film lose a bit of steam. But the waning of punk’s heat leaves behind a surprising afterglow and allows you to appreciate Joe Strummer’s warmth".

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"Temple's documentary utilizes an enormous amount of archival footage, personal interviews, news interviews, vintage photos, audio recordings and footage that he himself had been filming since 1976. Temple also had access to Strummer's personal notebooks, writings and recordings, so they feature heavily in the doc. ... Despite the fact that it is at times uneven in tone, this documentary does a more than adequate job of filling in the gaps about Joe Strummer that I didn't know about".

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