One major, nagging question claws at the subtext of Danielson: A Family Movie: If the Christians of America can put the smack down in the voting booth, stack millions for hacks like Thomas Kinkade, and rack bestsellers for the Left Behind series, why can’t they embrace a Christian band like Danielson that makes fun, provocative, and exceedingly Jesus-friendly music?
The great unspoken irony (read: injustice) is that while Danielson trolls the indie rock circuit as a novelty act, just scraping together an audience, some schleper in a mega-church is playing for 10,000 people. Daniel Smith, the mind behind Danielson, seems mostly unfazed. Wonderfully kooky, he helms a rotating cast of characters—his younger siblings and, at times, alt-set darling Sufjan Stevens—who belt out droning high school band warm-ups and campfire chants to the glory of God.
In the mind of Smith, revealed here as one of the most indispensable in rock music, it all makes perfect sense; he was made by God, so God must want him to be who he is, idiosyncrasies and all. “Success to me, first and foremost,” Smith says, “is being true to who you’re made to be.”
But all is not palm fronds laid before them. Danielson triumphs as a film largely because it does justice to its engrossing subject matter without turning a blind eye to its characters’ struggles. Is it even possible for an indie Christian band to survive in a religious climate that seems less DIY by the day? Watch this movie and decide for yourself.
-Buck Austin
Danielson: a Family movie
[or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE]
Director: JL Aronson
DVD, 105 minutes, $19.99, HVE/Image Entertainment
www.danielsonmovie.com