Lomax

A graphic novel snapshot of how John and Alan Lomax went throughout the deep South of the States, recording the traditional music – the chants of the railway layers, the spiritual songs – anything with blues and tradition and home-grown blood and guts about it. They were sure of their purpose, to record for posterity the musical history of these areas, checking out different lyrics to 'Stagger Lee' for example, and making the country much more aware of its country music, through recording in what stood as archive quality at the time for the Library of Congress. But just what kind of world were they entering – and what difference, if any, did their presence and recording equipment make?

I think this was a success, for if you didn't know the story, this window into it is a good one, showing one spell of just one of their journeys. But it's not brilliant. It is really heavy-handed with the racism, portraying these cops as entirely anti-black, these whites as against the Lomaxes for being too familiar with the blacks, and so on. Everyone gets visually stereotyped, from the protuberant lips and sullen faces to the sweating, broad-bellied cops. Beyond that, the visuals are fine – rather uneven in polish at times, for some reason, but cinematically showing off the narrative in a well-directed manner. There are imperfections with the script, too – the book wants to show all the private lives of the pair, but this looks like being John sorry for how Alan's birthday turned out, and some regrets about his dead wife that certainly did little for me, until a line later on very nicely contrasted with what he says in the opening scene.

What I was left with was a final reservation, however – this story is from the point of view of the Lomaxes, and we have to take it as their gospel, and this is I assume a heavily truncated showing of that gospel. I have to assume all these events, people and situations were met, but I didn't get the feel from the script here that I was fully convinced by it being exactly the truth. And when they were there to record the unedited truth, that shows the book was perhaps not quite up to the material. But it was a solid three and a half stars for bringing this father and son back to us.