Junun

“Junun”, the first carefree documentary in the career of obsessive big-time director Paul Thomas Anderson, does not reveal much about the story he’s telling. What it does express freely is the pure joy of briefly escaping Hollywood and making a movie where a couple of out-of-focus takes aren’t the end of the world. Laid back yet driven by curiosity, Anderson follows his long-time score composer, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, to India reversing their roles. Instead of Greenwood composing music for one of Anderson’s movies (“There Will be Blood”, “The Master”, “Inherent Vice”), it’s Anderson who’s following the mysterious call to Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan where Greenwood – along with a hand-picked selection of stellar Indian musicians – is helping out Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur lay down the tracks for his next album. Don’t expect explanations as to what they’re doing there and why the Maharaja of Jodhpur has given consent for the use of this 15th-Century location. What’s important is the wall-to-wall music that floods through the film with such all-consuming force, that it even convinced Anderson – a self-proclaimed film fanatic – to shoot his very first documentary on digital. And that’s no small feat…