Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A documentary capturing the creation of the album Junun inside Rajasthan’s 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort. Paul Thomas Anderson follows Jonny Greenwood, Shye Ben Tzur, Nigel Godrich, and the Rajasthan Express as they record a cross-cultural fusion of Indian, Israeli, and Western music.
Junun is a singular, immersive documentary in which Paul Thomas Anderson's restless, handheld camerawork inside the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort elevates the cinematography to a genuinely exceptional level — the visual language feels alive and atmospheric in ways rare for music docs. The novelty is equally high: the cross-cultural collision of Rajasthani, Israeli, and Western rock sensibilities, captured in real time, is a genuinely one-of-a-kind cultural document. Acting is moot in a documentary context but the personalities — Greenwood's quiet obsession, Godrich's technical immersion — provide compelling human texture. The plot (or rather structure) is loose and impressionistic rather than dramatically shaped, which gives the film its freewheeling energy but limits narrative propulsion. The ending arrives without strong resolution, feeling somewhat abrupt rather than earned, which is a modest shortcoming in an otherwise remarkable work.