Searching for Sugar Man (2012)'s comments

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

S.J Hurley

A well made documentary, but it just omits so much about Rodriguez in favour of portraying him as this mythical figure who fell off the face of the earth. In reality he was incredibly popular in Australia and he knew it and even toured. The film doesn't just let the truth get in the way of a good story, it flat out neglects significant periods of Rodriguez's life just to manufacture a narrative.

9 years 8 months ago

JKF

Great movie. Even greater story. Well deserved Oscar. No one should miss out on this. But, even more important, listen to Rodriguez' recordings. Some of the songs are of stellar quality.

10 years 10 months ago

greenhorg

I kind of wanted this movie to go in a different direction. Sixto should've been a millionaire with the units he was moving in South Africa. *Someone* got very rich off of this guys music. Either it was Clarence Avant, someone at Buddah Records, or some South African record company, but the real investigation isn't over.

Avant may be innocent, but he came off very poorly in the movie.

10 years 10 months ago

icheckmoviesaccount

I love that the filmmaker kept trying to suggest corruption and nobody that was actually involved in the story gave a shit. Just some dumb voice off-camera chiming in every few minutes about money, shut up already.

10 years 7 months ago

dombrewer

A well made documentary of the very unusual story of an counter-culture musical artist lost and found in the 1970s. The film falls down for me in two ways - most importantly I can't say I particularly cared for Rodriguez' music - the glowing comparisons to Bob Dylan seemed fanciful aside from a marked similarity in style - a good deal of the lyrics we hear seem far from the exceptional urban poetry they are presented as. The failure of the two albums in every territory bar South Africa seemed a quirk of fate, but not exceptional circumstances, although this is the second failing and an act of disingenuousness on the part of the director - Rodriguez was not completely forgotten after the failure of his second album - at the end of the 70s he was touring around Australia with some success after being rediscovered there. An inconvenient truth sidestepped for this particular telling of the story. The fact that the South African nation under Apartheid took the anti-establishment tone of the music to heart and the eventual "resurrection of Jesus" thirty years on is genuinely fascinating though ( spoiler

). The long overdue artistic fulfilment and previously unknown fame lavished on a man resigned to relative poverty and a life of manual labour in his native Detroit is quite extraordinary, more so when you find he apparently meekly returned to that lifestyle when all the hoopla died down. For that reason it is a story well worth seeing. As for the Oscar race - it seems to have the greatest buzz by far but I think not as moving and essential a film as fellow nominee "5 Broken Cameras" or as extraordinary a tale as a criminally neglected "The Imposter" two other 2012 documentaries well worth tracking down if you enjoyed this one.

11 years 2 months ago

For those who liked the film, I highly recommend an article that was published in Rolling Stone about the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/in-the-jungle-inside-the-long-hidden-genealogy-of-the-lion-sleeps-tonight-108274/

The article was written by one of the commentators in this movie, Rian Malan. It's similar to Rodriguez's story except the settings are flipped. The musical artist is South African who unknowingly became famous in the US. The article was published in 2000 so I bet Malan was inspired by Rodriguez's story to write this article.

3 years 8 months ago