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Indigo Women have been going sturdy for over 40 years now, and perhaps the important thing to their resilience is that they by no means had been cool. Typically, they bought it worse: Even at their industrial peak within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers had been routinely mocked for being too earnest, too poetic, too folky, too lesbian. Again then, being labeled a feminine, homosexual singer-songwriter was a creative and industrial curse, as Ray recollects in “It’s Solely Life After All,” a sensible, compelling new documentary.
The director, Alexandria Bombach, drastically benefited from Ray’s archivist instincts: The musician has held on to a long time’ price of artifacts and opened up her vault — 1981 rehearsals, recorded on cassette when Ray and Saliers had been of their teenagers, are startlingly crisp paperwork of a budding chemistry, for instance.
From this clay Bombach has sculpted an affecting portrait of two girls who’ve caught to their beliefs and, simply as vital, their loyalty to one another. Present followers might be mesmerized, however non-fans like me must also get a kick out of “It’s Solely Life After All.” The movie is very good about contextualizing the band’s emergence within the midst of condescension (at finest) from the mainstream media — their dramatic, and really humorous, studying of a withering 1989 overview in The New York Instances is a spotlight — together with their private struggles and steadfast political engagement for causes, together with the Indigenous-led group Honor the Earth.
Now that the band is experiencing a cultural second — its hit “Nearer to Effective” was prominently featured in “Barbie,” and an indie jukebox musical film set to their songs, “Glitter & Doom,” got here out final month — it’s pleasant to see them have the final snicker.
It’s Solely Life After All
Not rated. Operating time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters.
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