‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Is A Leaden, Overlong Doc Solely For Superfans [Venice Review]

Given the tendency of music documentaries to do little more than bring a Wikipedia page to life, it’s not exactly an encouraging sign when Bernard MacMahon’s “Becoming Led Zeppelin” begins with the band’s members literally listing off their date and place of birth. The film isn’t a complete rundown of their life and work – just a partial one, focusing on the group’s influences and early success from 1969-1970. But even a narrow focus cannot offset MacMahon’s indulgence of hanging onto every word in their interviews and every note of their performances.

This bloated documentary will not create any new fans of Led Zeppelin because MacMahon caters exclusively to the group’s superfans. “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is a veritable echo chamber of self-aggrandizement. MacMahon feels no need to zoom out and place the group’s formation and ascension within any kind of social or cultural history – the only voices explaining the band are the members themselves. To MacMahon, just hearing them describe the time is enough. The result is 137 minutes of empty hagiography that does not even bother to make the slightest effort proving the saintliness of its subjects.

There’s a period of the film where the approach feels as if it might pay some dividends. Most music documentaries treat an exploration of their subject’s forebearers as something to dispatch with only the most cursory detail. MacMahon digs in deep, not just dropping names but also featuring entire tracks from the artists who forged their sensibilities either through inspiration or collaboration. This section proves as much bibliography as biography.

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Rather than just name-dropping performers or genres, “Becoming Led Zeppelin” takes the time to fete their singular sonic imprint on the group, particularly those throbbing John Paul Jones bass lines cribbed from the blues. Yet the film also dithers in giving over extensive time to tracks and performances in their entirety from such as Petula Clark’s “Downtown” and Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” that ultimately have but the most tangential connection to Led Zeppelin’s music. His conceit of sequencing Led Zeppelin’s musical DNA is an intriguing approach. Yet, it’s woefully incomplete, with no spokespeople besides the band members to apply perspective on their affectionate recounting of their seminal experiences.

It’s only a preview of MacMahon’s approach to conveying the band’s meteoric rise in 1969 and 1970 when he just gives over several minutes to full tracks accompanied by little more than contemporaneous B-roll footage from the cities where their tour stopped. Once “Becoming Led Zeppelin” shifts into portraying the group’s formation and rapid ascent, any trace of their humble origins disappears. The band’s self-satisfaction takes control, and no directorial oversight from MacMahon arrives to make the connection between the film’s two halves.

There’s no attempt to isolate and sequence the aforementioned influences, nor is there really any assumption that the audience is intelligent enough to draw the lines themselves. “Becoming Led Zeppelin” simply devolves into a hoary mess that assumes viewers will be content to simply bask in a ceaseless parade of archival footage only briefly interjected by the band’s commentary. Every once in a while, they provide some fascinating making-of details explaining how they experimented with microphones and audio equipment to produce their distinctive sound.

But, more often than not, MacMahon makes the calculation that simply having all these performances and interviews strung together is enough to tide the audience over. It’s not by a long shot, save maybe for those with more than a casual interest in Led Zeppelin. Either MacMahon vastly overestimates the attention span or appetite of the viewers, or he’s released an assembly cut of his documentary. As it stands, the film makes the band’s exciting rock numbers feel like a brutal slog to endure.

Some trimming around the edges would certainly make the film go down a little easier, but the overall disjointedness of “Becoming Led Zeppelin” would require more than simply some shears in the editing room. By assuming, rather than proving, their greatness, MacMahon squanders an opportunity to grow the band’s fanbase and appreciation by speaking solely to the converted. [C-]

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