If you’re not a fan of the light country sound of the mega-selling Dixie Chicks, don’t let that put you off Shut Up & Sing. This is a documentary as boldly political as An Inconvenient Truth or Outfoxed, though it’s several shades more entertaining and invigorating. At the helm is famed documentarian Barbara Kopple, a keenly intelligent sixties radical who contributed to the watershed anti-war indictment Winter Soldier and directed the seminal coal strike doco Harlan County USA, along with the insightful Woody Allen portrait Wild Man Blues. Co-directing is Cecilia Peck, who previously teamed with Kopple for A Conversation With Gregory Peck, a wonderful tribute to her father. They prove a formidable filmmaking team.
'Just so you know," Dixie Chicks lead singer, Texan Natalie Maines, told a London concert audience back in 2003, 'we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Though intended as a throwaway comment, it soon lit a spark in the conservative heartland of America, where everyone so hilariously and hypocritically cherishes the concept of 'freedom of speech". The Dixie Chicks – previously one of the safest bands on the planet – were now public enemy number one, as crazed crackers started burning their records and just stopped short of demanding their execution.
This fascinating and casually cutting documentary chronicles the fallout, as the Dixie Chicks lose a large chunk of their audience but gain a new kind of cred, recording a record with hipper-than-thou producer Rick Rubin, and resolutely refusing to apologise or take a backward step. In the process, Natalie Maines takes on admirable and unlikely rebel status in a way that she probably never dreamed.
Filmink 4/5
