Arthur Russell’s music was “out of its time,” says former Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks near the end of Matt Wolf’s documentary. He’s right. Russell’s strange, exquisite music — dance tracks, avant-garde cello-and-voice songs, pop tunes — has been enjoying a renaissance in recent years, but it retains a magical otherworldliness. This makes Wolf’s project an intriguing one. On the one hand, he wants a reconstruction of Russell’s life to explain Russell’s music, and this never happens. The many friends and collaborators who are interviewed think Russell was a weird, gentle genius — which we knew already. On the other hand, Wolf gets to include footage of Russell playing live and in the recording studio, and some of that — especially the grainy footage where he performs a song called “Eli” — is revelatory. There’s no explaining Arthur Russell. It’s best just to listen to his music. I hope Wolf’s documentary will encourage people to do precisely that.
70 minutes | Museum Of Fine Arts: October 30, 31; November 2, 5, 7, 8
