The Future Is Unwritten

undefined

As the lead singer of The Clash from 1977 onward, Joe Strummer changed people's lives forever. Four years after his death, his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly now than ever before. In The Future Is Unwritten, from British film director Julien Temple, Joe Strummer is revealed not just as a legend or musician, but as a true communicator of our times. Drawing on both a shared punk history and the close personal friendship that developed over the last years of Joe's life, Julien Temple's film is a celebration of Joe Strummer--before, during, and after The Clash. (IFC Films) .com ---- Julien Temple, one of the early documentarians of the London punk scene and director of the 2000 Sex Pistols film The Filth and the Fury, turns his attention now to that other seminal British band: The Clash--or more accurately, to the band's co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead singer, Joe Strummer. The Future is Unwritten is more than just a biography of Strummer; it is a tribute and exploration of a musician, artist and devoted humanist. Though Temple respects and admires Strummer (his influence is exalted by close friends, peers and fans like Bono and John Cusack), he doesn't romanticize this larger-than-life personality and presents Strummer honestly and not always in flattering light, though the director's fondness for his subject is constant. Most movingly, Strummer himself provides the narration via reassembled excerpts from a variety of interviews and the BBC radio show he hosted during the nineties. In the wrong hands, this could be contrived, but in this masterful documentary it serves as a testament to not just Joe Strummer the myth, but Joe Strummer the man, telling us his story in vivid detail. The Future is Unwritten is a moving and personal portrait of a musician who helped shaped not just punk, but modern music as a whole. --Kira Canny