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Film

A descent into the inferno

By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 6, 2006

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (PG-13) (110 min.) - The fine line between genius and madness is tragically blurred in Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary, chronicling a life that would be considered unbelievable if this were a work of fiction. Daniel Johnston deals with the devil and innumerable demons while becoming an underground cult figure whose gifted irrationality is part of his appeal.

Johnston is a musician, although that definition is stretched by his amateurish guitar strumming and singing that sounds like a strangled scream. His appearances, mostly among the Austin, Texas, music scene, are legendary, if only because of their rarity as his psyche dissolved. Nirvana, Beck and Sonic Youth are a few major acts that covered his painfully introspective songs. Johnston is the Brian Wilson of nihilist rock, a talent wrecked by psychosis that perversely enhances his reputation.

Feuerzeig covers this shattered life with bewildered respect, immensely aided by the fact that Johnston habitually carried a tape recorder since his youth, capturing his tangled thoughts and the ambient pressure from parents who didn't like his style of art. Johnston's sketches show a child's simplicity - Casper and Captain America are recurring images - and unmistakable anguish. He might have made a fine filmmaker, judging from his imaginative editing and dubbing of rebellious home movies and animated MTV-style videos for his songs.

Mostly there is his raw, revealing music, almost primal in its pain, making it attractive to grunge fans who smell teen spirit in his lyrics. Johnston never duplicated his demo tapes; he recorded each from scratch with hand-drawn cover art to pass around like business cards. He was in Austin at the right time, when MTV came to document the music scene and Johnston was a hot topic. If he had only gotten his head together, he might have been a star.

Feuerzeig doesn't flinch from the dirty details of LSD abuse, violent episodes and an astounding plane crash - Johnston turned off the ignition and tossed the keys out a window - that ruined his sanity. An obsession with Christian values that led to defacing the Statue of Liberty with hundreds of Jesus fish drawings is downright scary.

Listening to his parents wonder what they could've done better is heartbreaking. We're encouraged by Johnston's tiniest steps toward success and disheartened when he continually blows it.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston is superb storytelling with a fascinating subject, the likes of whom we've never seen on screen before. Feuerzeig pieces together the fragments like a case study with a backbeat while allowing the humor even Johnston finds in his predicament to shine through. Johnston might have become the renaissance man of his generation. Instead, he'll settle for inspiring one of the best movies of 2006. A

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

[Last modified July 5, 2006, 10:20:54]