Directed by Danny Cohen
Featuring Courtney Barnett
Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes
Screening in Los Angeles July 15, then July 19 and nationwide to follow

by Jaime Davis, Staff Writer

If Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist wonder, Elvis, taught us anything, it’s that Elvis was larger than life because he couldn’t not be. He craved it…needed it, just as much as his fans needed him to be A Rock ‘N Roll Star. Less than a week after I sat dumbstruck in a theater watching Austin Butler’s knockout performance, I watched a quiet documentary at home about another great troubadour of another particular generation, the notoriously fame-shy Courtney Barnett. I know, I know - these two musicians couldn’t be more different! Yet the films, while opposite in scope and format, both deal with similar themes of stardom: the strains of touring, impostor syndrome, the toll on mental health. Anonymous Club is a quietly stirring, anxious, happy-sad video journal following the quiet, anxious, happy-sad Courtney Barnett over a period of three years surrounding the release of her 2018 album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. Shot on luminous 16mm Kodak film with Barnett’s audio diaries acting as narrator, it has quickly cemented itself as one of the most fascinating music docs I’ve ever seen. 

I first heard the strains of a Barnett song in 2013 thanks to my favorite radio station (shout out to Radio K from the University of Minnesota). It was “Avant Gardener,” and the lyrics, coupled with Barnett’s easy breezy, lackadaisical vocals immediately caught my attention. After singing about her particular symptoms during a panic attack, Barnett’s next lines, simple as they are, floored me for some reason:

Reminds me of the time
When I was really sick
And I had too much pseudoephedrine and I
Couldn't sleep at night

And then a few seconds later:

The paramedic thinks I'm clever 'cause I play guitar
I think she's clever 'cause she stops people dying

There was something so immediate and real and witty in those words that I just understood and connected with. My own anxiety, my own experience with panic attacks, the way my brain snaps from stray thought to stray thought much like the lyrics of “Avant Gardener” - it made me notice her in a big way.

So did the rest of the world. In Part I of the melancholy Anonymous Club, Barnett is on tour in Shanghai and encounters a fan who traveled 10 hours from elsewhere in the country just to see her. Then she’s off to Busan and Tokyo and Europe and North America and on and on and on. If you watch enough music docs (or 80’s music videos) you know that touring can be particularly rough, yet also fun and rewarding, and at some point Barnett, with her self-proclaimed love/hate relationship with touring, is ready for it to end. 

This is just a silly thing, but I didn’t realize how “big” Barnett currently is in the music world. I always thought of her as this amazing songwriter person whose music happens to play on the college radio station I listen to. Like she really made it, y’all! I guess if NME proclaims you as “the voice” of your generation, or if DIY says you’re the “most skilled lyricist in modern music” then, yeah, you’re gonna be pretty damn big. 

Yet for all of her international fame and acclaim, the film showcases the singer’s share of struggles. Many of us tend to equate stars with an innate and vast amount of confidence, yet the movie takes great pains to illustrate the musician’s abyss of self-doubt. In interviews, for example, Barnett feels unable to adequately articulate what she wants to say, which leads to feelings of impostor syndrome and lack of poise. In an audio diary, she beats herself up a bit: “Why can’t you just be a strong, powerful communicator?” (In my opinion, the relentless PR machine is equally at fault here but that’s not for this review to dissect.) She moves through her creative endeavors, tours, and accolades with a mix of awe, trepidation, unsure footing, and sadness, which leads to further malaise. “What’s the point of talking about my feelings? I’ve got nothing to complain about,” she says at one point in the film. A particularly raw moment comes in Dallas - while performing the heartbreaking “Depreston,” she cries her way through the end chorus with the help of the crowd. 

Anonymous Club, in theory, is nothing entirely new - a certain Music God tours and tires and retreats and rests only to reset and repeat the whole process all over again. But in practice, director Danny Cohen, in his feature debut, presents a face we don’t always see from the musicians inhabiting our current time and space. Most known for quirky music videos for Barnett and fellow Australian musicians King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Cohen unlocks a side of Barnett that can feel somewhat foreign in the world of prominence. In a pivotal moment, Barnett gives herself a little pep talk before her first solo show. “They’re not quiet because they hate me, they’re quiet because it’s a quiet room and they’re being respectful.” It’s the exact way I talk to myself before delivering any kind of presentation at work, just with much lower stakes. It’s an endearing scene that may surprise some but feel familiar to many others. Stars, they’re just like us, yet Barnett really does seem grounded, or at least like she’s trying to stay that way. 

Other music docs of late have attempted a similar sense of relatability, films like Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry or Miss Americana (Taylor Swift), or Gaga: Five Feet Two. Yet these three personal films happen to be about the Biggest Popstars in the Entire World, maybe as big as Elvis. Maybe even bigger, depending on who you’re talking to. Yet Barnett’s story on screen is different in that it mirrors her own music and persona - a gaggle of mixed emotions dressed down in jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers, accessible as all get-out. The film isn’t called Courtney Barnett: Anonymous Club for this very reason, and that’s exactly as it should be. 

By the end, Barnett is hopeful for the good things coming: “I know it’s not completely bad because I’m looking forward to the next day…I have hope for the next day.” Faithfully and lovingly, Anonymous Club pieces together the steps she takes to remain as genuine, creative, and clear in mind as possible. Just as Elvis may have craved being the center of attention, maybe Barnett needs the opposite.