It's a drag, then, that all Jayanti does manage to come up with is a portrait that's alternately fawning and disapproving. In its thoughtful, frowny mode, the movie's unspoken undertone is, "No one likes a murderer." But even though Jayanti tries to give the whole enterprise a calm, classy veneer, there's always a degree of fannish devotion -- a wide-eyed "This is Phil F-ing Spector we're talking about!" breathlessness -- at work. The film isn't intended to be a thorough overview of Spector's life: Although it includes clips of Ronnie Spector singing, along with the Ronettes, one of Spector's greatest songs (and one of the greatest in all of 20th century pop music) "Be My Baby," it doesn't mention that Ronnie was Spector's wife for more than 10 years. And during the course of the loopy and seemingly endless interviews Jayanti conducted with Spector (these were taped during Spector's first trial, which ended in a mistrial), the producer makes a few passing references to his son, Philip, who died of leukemia at age 9 -- the child's death is never mentioned directly. Those aren't necessarily flaws, but they reinforce the notion that this movie is for the initiated only, for those who are already steeped in Spector lore and who are curious -- morbidly or otherwise -- to find out exactly how much of a weirdo he really is.
The answer is unsurprising but also unspeakably sad in its obviousness: Spector's weirdness is pretty much off the charts, and Jayanti's approach confirms our worst hunches while failing to illuminate any of the more intricate nooks and crannies of this brilliant, troubled soul. Spector counters Jayanti's questions (his queries are presented off-screen, though we occasionally hear his voice) with responses that are at times almost endearingly insecure and at other times -- there's no nicer way to put it -- just plain crazy.
When quizzed about the electrocharged Buckwheat hairdo he sported at a 2003 court appearance, Spector defensively quips that he was channeling Albert Einstein, Beethoven and Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons. He says that in real life, his coif didn't look quite so bushy. "That day -- it got a little extreme," he concedes. When he talks about his life's disappointments, he says, with a faint pout, that he's never gotten an honorary degree from a college, as Bob Dylan and Bill Cosby have. Even Buddy Holly -- who, he notes, was only on the rock'n'roll scene for three years of his life -- has a postage stamp.
There's nothing nuts about nursing a bruised ego that way, particularly considering that Spector grew up in a lower-middle-class Bronx family who would have seen a college degree, even an honorary one, as a major achievement. But Spector's biggest bête noire is, it turns out, the seemingly benign Tony Bennett -- the singer's name comes up at least five times in the film, mostly because Spector sees him as a figure who, unlike himself, is consistently viewed positively in the press.
It probably helps that Bennett has never faced a murder charge, but never mind. During Jayanti's questioning, Spector is always reasonably polite, and he looks fairly normal albeit in an eccentric, rock-genius way: His outfits include a series of groovily tailored suits worn with open shirt collars, often accented with elaborate jewelry and silk pocket squares. His hair, most likely a toupee, is fashioned into an only slightly puffy Paul Williams-style bowl cut, a vast improvement on the Brillo pad look.
But when Spector starts answering questions about his alleged guilt or innocence, he rails against a jury that "voted for George Bush"; he motors on about the percentage of the populace that has already decided he's guilty or insane or both. And it's in those moments when he really does seem unhinged, talking so fast he sometimes slobbers a bit as he grabs at whatever wisps of logic he can pull from the air. This is more painful to watch than it is interesting or informative, worsened by the fact that Jayanti has organized -- for lack of a better word -- the film in a way that tries to put songs produced nearly 50 years ago in a contemporary context. He cuts the interview footage with performance footage from the likes of the Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Righteous Brothers, in a heavy-handed attempt to contrast the beauty Spector has given the world with the heinousness of the murder. Even then, he can't just allow the lush grandness of the Wall of Sound speak for itself: He has to present the words of rock critic Mick Brown (author of Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector) via subtitles, intoning pretentious observations about this or that song's "romantic yearning" and declaring every other song a masterpiece.
Jayanti often layers Brown's useless and tiresome subtitles over dialogue, or, worse, over silent footage from the first trial. The result is a kind of junior high-school psychoanalysis project. We get a predictably ominous retrofitting of the Crystals' 1962 "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)." And John Lennon's 1972 "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" plays over some of the Lana Clarkson head shots that were used as court evidence. (They're poignant enough by themselves, thanks.) During his interviews, Jayanti digs deep with questions like, "How does pain figure into your work?"; at least he doesn't ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" which is a small blessing.
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector is painful to watch, partly because the material is so clumsily patched together and partly because there's just no way to feel good, or even just OK, about Phil Spector as he is today. You don't need a hifalutin rock critic to point out how poignant "Be My Baby" sounds in the context of Spector's sad, horrific story. Better to allow it a life of its own, independent of its creator's downhill slide -- to treat it as a flower he planted in better days, rather than a work of art with its roots stretching deep into a troubled mind.