LimeWire Music Blog

By now, we all know the contradiction that is Lil Wayne’s career: Like so many great popular musicians, he’s brilliant and prolific, but also violent and self-destructive. He puts out a top-notch mixtape and pleads guilty to weapons possession in the same week. And that, it seems, is the paradox 26-year-old director Adam Bhala Lough has delved into in The Carter, his documentary about the rapper. As The Fader reports, the film is so strong it led Variety to draw comparisons to Bob Dylan, “cause that’s who old people compare awesome shit to.” Here’s what the slightly younger folks over at indieWIRE had to say about the flick:

Favoring more an experiential tone than an informational one, Lough transcends even the most accomplished cinema verite documentaries to put you right inside the mind of his subject, an eccentric codeine and marijuana addict who has completely given his life over to making and promoting his music 24/7. (Wayne even admits in one poignant interview that he’s too busy making music to have sex.) Because of this, the film runs with a relentlessly repetitious pattern, one that rings of the vigorous construction of greatly crafted filmmaking. Yet, it still manages to deliver on a purely entertaining level as Lough treats us to hilarious interview footage, never before released daily freestyles (Wayne records two songs a day, every day of the year, and never writes down a single lyric) and backgrounds on the most important people in his life, including his daughter Reginae, who Lough brilliant uses as the symbol of naïve innocence in the film, the only person who is willing to directly address Wayne as a strong presence and persona as she coyly smiles and admits to the camera that the best gift he’s ever given her is “him being there.”

Much like Margaret Brown’s “The Order of Myths” was to Sundance 2008, “The Carter” is the most experimental, most ambitious, and most rewarding documentary screening in Park City this year, making it not only the strongest of the midnight section, but also the best film in Sundance 2009.

Check out the just-released trailer for the promising doc below: