Jagged – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Jagged – first-look review

18 Sep 2021

Words by Sydney Urbanek

A smiling woman with long, dark hair and bangs looks directly at the camera.
A smiling woman with long, dark hair and bangs looks directly at the camera.
Ali­son Klay­man delves into the ori­gins and lega­cy of Ala­nis Morissette’s ground­break­ing album Jagged Lit­tle Pill’.

At one point in the 90s, near­ly one in 10 Amer­i­cans owned a copy of Ala­nis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Lit­tle Pill’. Jagged, a new doc­u­men­tary about the Cana­di­an alt-rocker’s mete­oric rise, begins by throw­ing view­ers right into the pan­de­mo­ni­um of the era. The film is an instal­ment in HBO’s Music Box docuseries and is the lat­est from Ali­son Klay­man, per­haps best known for 2012’s Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sor­ry.

While Jagged Lit­tle Pill’ is the album that intro­duced most of the world to the Ottawan artist, her break­through project was in fact her third, released just days after her 21st birth­day. Her pre­ced­ing two albums, 1991’s Ala­nis’ and 1992’s Now is the Time’, had been avail­able only in her home coun­try, where she was known as some­thing of a teen pop sensation.

After being dropped by her label, she moved to Los Ange­les to write what even­tu­al­ly became her first inter­na­tion­al release. Her cre­ative part­ner here was not­ed pop song­writer and pro­duc­er Glen Bal­lard, who recalls know­ing instant­ly that he had a gift­ed lyri­cist on his hands. The first stab at Jagged Lit­tle Pill’, we’re told, was record­ed with the lyrics more or less locked.

Secur­ing a new label for the idio­syn­crat­ic Moris­sette was more of a chal­lenge. The duo were turned down by every­one except the Madon­na co-found­ed Mav­er­ick, which signed Moris­sette in 1994 after hear­ing just a cou­ple of songs. It was the fol­low­ing year that the album’s explo­sive lead sin­gle, You Ough­ta Know’, debuted on LA’s KROQ-FM, cat­a­pult­ing her into the lime­light prac­ti­cal­ly overnight. Klay­man smart­ly under­scores this moment by play­ing 75 untam­pered-with sec­onds of the music video. To some extent, the sequence sug­gests, the song doesn’t need explaining.

But it’s nev­er­the­less on the top­ic of Morissette’s music that we’re intro­duced to the film’s talk­ing heads. Aside from the star her­self, who reports from the mas­sive library in her North­ern Cal­i­for­nia home, the group con­sists of most­ly music jour­nal­ists and crit­ics, though Garbage’s Shirley Man­son acts as Morissette’s sole indus­try peer, and repeat col­lab­o­ra­tor Kevin Smith is there for good measure.

And while the film is arguably more illu­mi­nat­ing about the sur­round­ing album era than the album itself, one of its main take­aways is how much more emo­tion­al­ly com­plex the lat­ter was than its con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous cov­er­age ever sug­gest­ed. Angry” was the descrip­tor thrown around the most, but Klayman’s inter­vie­wees paint a sig­nif­i­cant­ly more nuanced pic­ture of the record. Its cre­ator, for her part, remem­bers Jagged Lit­tle Pill’ as a hope­ful, even mer­ci­ful project – any spite­ful­ness notwithstanding.

Moris­sette, though, had plen­ty of rea­son to be angry at 21. Ear­ly in the film, she describes the strange dynam­ic that came with being Canada’s pop princess, where she was at once liv­ing out her child­hood dreams and being preyed upon by old­er men. As a teenag­er, she was asked by a pro­duc­er to lose weight, ignit­ing what she calls a mas­sive eat­ing dis­or­der journey.”

With­out nam­ing names, she also makes statu­to­ry rape alle­ga­tions, adding that nobody she told did any­thing to inter­vene. Women don’t wait,” she says of that lazy ques­tion often asked of sex­u­al assault sur­vivors. A cul­ture doesn’t lis­ten.” The rev­e­la­tion comes rather late in the film, but in a way that par­al­lels the way that adult Moris­sette has had to unpack the expe­ri­ence years removed from it.

Ahead of its Toron­to pre­mière, the star denounced Jagged, call­ing it sala­cious” and reduc­tive.” That’s entire­ly with­in her right; it’s also true that it’s large­ly struc­tured by her own tes­ti­mo­ny. Sur­round­ed by her books, fortysome­thing Moris­sette is unflinch­ing, elo­quent, and quite fun­ny. A lot of the film’s mag­ic also lies in its wealth of rare footage, which its sub­ject seems to have sup­plied, a lot of it shot by her­self. (Ear­ly on in the film, she vis­its a stor­age lock­er where she’s kept every­thing – demo tapes, con­tact sheets from pho­to­shoots, a copy of Smith’s 1999 film Dog­ma, and so on.) That lev­el of inti­ma­cy and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is under­stand­ably uncom­fort­able for Moris­sette, but it’s indeed what sets the film apart in this era of on-screen music hagiography.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it strug­gles a bit towards the end. Around the same time as she’s being inter­viewed, Moris­sette is gear­ing up to release 2020’s Such Pret­ty Forks in the Road’, her first album in eight years. But there’s no attempt to even briefly abridge the pre­ced­ing two decades – noth­ing about the five albums, the act­ing career, the mar­riage, or the three chil­dren that have all defined her post-‘Jagged Lit­tle Pill’ life. So when we see her play­ing with her kids in her back­yard, there are – nar­ra­tive­ly speak­ing – zero stakes, how­ev­er cute they are.

There’s also a ques­tion­able attempt to nod to her music indus­try suc­ces­sors. Bey­on­cé and Tay­lor Swift are put for­ward via footage of each artist cov­er­ing You Ough­ta Know’ – in Swift’s case, duet­ting with Moris­sette, whom she thanks on stage for her con­fes­sion­al song­writ­ing. These exam­ples aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wild­ly off-base, but they seem to have been cho­sen less for their genealog­i­cal accu­ra­cy and more because they’re high-pro­file. Any­one from Avril Lav­i­gne to Halsey, both of whom have actu­al­ly put their work in con­ver­sa­tion with Moris­sette, would have made more sense.

Though Jagged has trou­ble stick­ing the land­ing, it remains a cap­ti­vat­ing deep-dive into a cer­ti­fied cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, if a bit thin on the actu­al music that pro­pelled it. The head­lines being gen­er­at­ed in response to Morissette’s denounce­ment are ulti­mate­ly shap­ing up to be far more sala­cious and reduc­tive than the film itself, which is invari­ably respect­ful of its sub­ject and her artistry.

You might like