The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights

Documentary Feature, Spotlight Premieres
D: Emmett Malloy; with Jack White, Meg White

In 2007, upon the release of their sixth album, Icky Thump, the White Stripes set out to chart unexplored (for them) territory: Canada. Malloy’s documentation of this tour is part rock concert, part portrait of a musical duo at a critical junction in their career together. As they plant a flag in every province and territory, the audience witnesses an evolving portrait of the kinetic, Tigger-like Jack, who thrives on spontaneity, and the perpetually beatific, bemused Meg. The concert footage is beautifully edited and creates its own tension within the film by compressing the live show into snippets joined together by blurred/sped-up editing; Malloy also capitalizes nicely on the landscape. Shot a few months before Meg’s acute anxiety issues forced the band to cancel the remainder of the band’s 2007 tour, the film ends on a poignant note, one that reveals the bandmates’ humanity and depth of affection for one another.

This article appears in March 26 • 2010.

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