I don't have the time and space, much less the words, to effectively communicate how inspired I've been by Sondheim's use of language, how moved I've been by his gift for melody, or how threatened I've felt during any attempt to master a performance of one of his songs. As an artist, he's just at the peak of everything I could aspire to be.
So in the moments during "Six by Sondheim," a new documentary focusing primarily on Sondheim's creative process, when he comes across as somewhat aloof, I remained enamored. I think we tend to forgive true geniuses of their occasional lapses in social graces and strays from humility. After all, they're just operating on an entirely different level.
I was pleased that Sondheim's longtime collaborator James Lapine took up the task of attempting to piece together something out of four decades of Sondheim interviews to create this film. After all, Lapine understands as well as anyone how Sondheim works and wisely highlights the symbolism of Sondheim's belief that putting a show together is like assembling a puzzle.
As Sondheim himself has famously said: "Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."
Lapine brings order out of this particular chaos by whittling down Sondheim's massive canon to six key songs, which he uses as a loose frame upon which to hang snippets of interviews and stories from Sondheim about everything from how to write a lyric to his career journey to anecdotes about particular collaborators. The songs chosen are perhaps relatively obvious but nonetheless effective. They are: "Something's Coming," "Opening Doors," "Send in the Clowns," "I'm Still Here," "Being Alive" and "Sunday."
My biggest complaint about "Six by Sondheim" is that it's not long enough for fans like me. Its 86 minutes fly by and leave fans wanting more stories, more insights, more performances. What about "Children Will Listen"? How can you skip "Sweeney Todd"?
But upon further reflection, what makes "Six by Sondheim" such a great documentary is in Lapine's ability to represent the core foundation of Stephen Sondheim in such a tight and organized manner. He simply grabs for some of the larger pieces of the Sondheim puzzle and uses them to illuminate some of the most vital factors that explain the man's artistry. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe less is more. And in choosing this method, I suspect that even viewers who do not know Sondheim well or don't obsess over him like so many of us theatre geeks do could watch this film and truly feel like they've taken an incredible dive into the nature of creating art. Through Lapine's inspired structure, we experience everything from where the author's personal life enters in to his lyrics to the dreaded (and cliche) which comes first...the lyrics or the music debate.
To accent the documentary's structure, Lapine inserts nearly complete performances of each of the songs, mixing together vintage footage of original performances (as with "Something's Coming" and "Being Alive") with newly-staged clips shot by other filmmakers (like Todd Haynes' bizzare take on "I'm Still Here," reimagined as song performed by a man to an audience of women - and my least favorite part of this film). For "Send in the Clowns," arguably Sondheim's most famous individual song, Lapine even throws in a mashup of some of the many diverse artists who have covered the song over the past 40 years, an effective way of demonstrating the song's lasting power.
Looking beyond the documentary film making itself, I find my respect for Stephen Sondheim ever deepening. It's hard for me to dislike a man who calls teaching "the sacred profession" and uses puzzle imagery to explain everything from putting on a show to life itself in a way that no one other than Orson Welles could do in "Citizen Kane." There were some ideas about Sondheim I knew about already from my time spent reading about him and studying him, and still some fresh surprises, particularly in how he uses an idea for a song title to guide his work, or how he approaches songwriting from the position of being an actor, rather than being autobiographical. (In fact, "Opening Doors" is included here because Sondheim says it is his only fully autobiographical song.)
A lack of knowledge of Stephen Sondheim will likely keep many away from even being aware of the existence of "Six by Sondheim," which is currently airing on HBO and available on demand. And I'm saddened that the film was not shortlisted to compete for the Academy Award, though I don't know whether or not it was submitted. What I do know is that if you are someone who values art and music and ideas in your life - if you're someone like me who cannot go a day without a song or the passion music brings in terms of deepening our plights as human beings - you should seek out "Six by Sondheim" and be inspired by this man's ability to explain the necessity of art in our lives.
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