After So Many Days

Film Review: “We’re notorious for being one of the most unlucky bands in the world”: an unexpected comment from Jim Hanft, one half of LA indie band Jim and Sam, in the middle of a 365-day, gig-a-night tour of a dozen countries. And yet, one wonders if he’s right. Derailed almost at once by a blizzard, the tour and film emerge as a bizarre travelogue of forgotten tiny spaces, as Jim and Sam play ice cream parlours, barbershops, corner shops, retirement homes, petrol station forecourts, people’s flats, a pasture full of cows, and even a ski lift – along the way, receiving praise, encouragement and advice from an array of random, mostly kind, sometimes funny people. The sheer scale of their misadventure raises a larger question about attention-seeking in popular culture, as the newlywed bandmates’ relentless, brutal honesty about their long-term lack of success, and that lack of success itself, swirl around each other like yin and yang. In an industry built on razzmatazz and elaborate, glitzy facades, can an ordinary-looking, plain-speaking, middle class married couple on the cusp of middle age nevertheless "break through" based on musical talent alone? The film’s answer, almost to its own surprise, appears to be: "Yes." Dan MacCannell