Title: Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon
Directors: Stephen C. Mitchell and Casey McGrath
An unusually intimate peek behind the curtain of the Followill fraternity, “Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon” arrives at particularly bizarre time, coming as it does on the heels of the successful, Grammy Award-winning band’s cancellation of the entirety of its remaining U.S. fall tour dates after a disastrous show in Dallas in which lead singer Caleb Followill suddenly left the stage. After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, the documentary bows on Showtime this evening, with repeat presentations scheduled over the next several weeks.
The sons of Betty Ann and Ivan Followill, a homemaker and traveling Pentecostal revivalist preacher, Caleb, Nathan and Jared joined forces with their cousin Matthew to peddle their own brand of Southern garage/roots rock, riding a couple well received albums to overseas touring success before truly punching through Stateside with 2008’s multi-platinum “Only By the Night.” Co-directed by Stephen C. Mitchell and Casey McGrath, the former of whom was a Nashville A&R rep who initially signed Nathan and Caleb to a record contract, “Talihina Sky” unfolds somewhere between fan document and tantalizing expose. Mitchell’s decade-plus-long relationship with the group gives him access to personal home videos, interviews and behind-the-scenes rehearsal and recording studio footage, not all of it flattering. And he and McGrath also make the decision to frame their film around the Followills’ return to one of their annual family reunions in rural Oklahoma, where various cousins, uncles, second cousins and uncles who might be second cousins provide — in their sometimes drunken ramblings — provide in cumulative a telling portrait of familial roots that implicitly if sympathetically offers up a psychological explanation of some of the Followill boys’ behavior and (latent) problems.
Still, even though Ivan and Betty Ann submit to proper interviews, and there’s a proper accounting of the circumstances that led in particular Nathan and Caleb from Jesus-praising hymnals to peddling “the devil’s music,” “Talihina Sky” unfolds at a bit of a remove, probably in large part because the band members are all producers on the project, and therefore reluctant to sign off on anything that lastingly portrays either them or their loved ones in too negative of a light. Caleb talks rather movingly about the shame of being poor as a child, and how that is definitely a motivating factor in his young adult life. And Ivan speculates about the impact that the divorce of he and his wife had on his kids. But every time “Talihina Sky” seems close to offering up real and penetrating insights — in regards to Ivan’s alcoholism, say, or any of the other Followills’ bouts with booze and marijuana — it pulls back, and throws in some old public access performance footage, or clips of a spirited game of horseshoes at the aforementioned reunion.
There’s a lot between the lines, in other words. In the sparse and seemingly free-association interview segments with the Followills, Mitchell and McGrath obviously don’t press them for a lot answers. So when Caleb ruminates about an A&R rep stopping by the recording studio and giving his opinion recording singles choices, and evocatively compares it to a smut film, there’s no clarifying follow-up. Similarly, some gripping tour bus footage in which one of the band members rips into Caleb for his drunken selfishness appears out of nowhere, and lacks any contextual placement.
“Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon” is a picture of a group of twentysomething guys in motion, and development. It lacks definition, and clarity. Still, that’s hardly a mortal sin, given the not-yet-cast maturity of its subjects. Both the sheer amount and quality of achingly personal footage here is easily worthy of a viewing by even casual fans of the group, or just those for whom modern music and the accompanying tour lifestyle holds interest. Just don’t expect firm answers about some of the problems that plague these guys. That speculation is left up to each individual viewer.
Technical: B-
Story: C+
Overall: C+
Written by: Brent Simon
