Phases and Stages

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Sam Jones is a heartbreaker. The black-and-white cinematography matting his feature-length debut underscores the filmmaker’s belief that said archaic medium lends a certain “out of time” quality to its subject matter. Shooting film as opposed to “running” digital video, Jones, a professional photographer and lifelong musician, alchemizes a breathtaking saturation in which black is bottomless and everything else is incandescent. Combined with the director’s admitted emulation of D.A. Pennebaker’s landmark Dylan doc, 1967’s Don’t Look Back, the timeless visual flavor of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart all but guarantees it a long, prosperous DVD shelf life. Documenting the painful birth of Wilco’s fourth album, Top 10 2002 consensus-maker Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which caused serious rifts both within the group and with their label, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart picks up the beloved, Chicago-based pop band’s story at a critical juncture in its history. Unfortunately, no one called in the documentarians for two pivotal plot points — Wilco being dropped by Reprise Records and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett’s firing — which the director acknowledges in the film’s audio commentary (complete with band), calling it a “real nightmare to deal with from a filmmakers standpoint.” Realistically, it’s impossible to capture such things on camera, according to Jones, and he’s right to a certain degree (Gimme Shelter a glaring exception), but there’s also no way not to feel it missing either. That said, the DVD of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart improves on the theatrical version by adding another layer of revelation in the commentary and a second disc with 60 minutes worth of unseen footage. The delicious “Pieholden Suite,” sweetly Beatlesque “Cars Can’t Escape,” and warm alternate reading of Foxtrot‘s “Radio Cure” go hand in hand with the film’s original 90 minutes of live, solo, and rehearsal-space Wilco heartbreak.

This article appears in March 28 • 2003.