6 — Friday, September 29, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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NETFLIX

Lady Gaga’s new documentary is on Netflix now
‘Five Foot Two’ is a raw 
look into a pop giant’s life

New documentary shows Lady GaGa in all the ways she 
hasn’t been seen before: unfiltered, imperfect and vulnerable

“Five Foot Two” is aptly 

titled — because for all the glitz 
and the hype and the drama, 
Lady Gaga is a person first 
and foremost, and a very small 
and vulnerable one at that. The 
Netflix documentary directed 
by Chris Moukarbel (“Banksy 
Does New York”) makes a strong 
case for the humanity of one of 
the most outlandish and alien 
pop icons of our generation. 
Gaga has made a career for 
herself based on a distinct and 
utterly inhuman persona — and 
yet, here she is, inviting the 
world to see her most intimate 
inner self.

The 

documentary 
follows 
the 

making 
and 

release 
of 
her 

album 
Joanne, 

her 
preparation 

for 
the 
Super 

Bowl 
halftime 

show 
and 

her 
personal 

struggles 
with 

health 
and 

heartbreak 
during that time. 
Through it all, it’s 
almost shocking 
how far into her 
personal 
space 

Gaga 
allows 

the camera. We 
see her doctors’ 
appointments 
and 
crying 

breakdowns, and 
no emotion seems 
too personal for 
the 
audience’s 

prying eyes. This 
is, of course, a 
construction of 
the medium (who knows how 
much she’s leaving out?) but it 
doesn’t matter very much. The 
point is that it feels open and 
inviting, and it inspires that 
specific empathy that comes 
when 
an 
audience 
usually 

kept far removed is brought 
close. The most uncomfortably 
intimate the viewer gets is 
when she goes to visit her 
grandmother to play her the 
song “Joanne,” written about 
Gaga’s aunt who died at the age 
of 19. “Did I get it right?” Gaga 
asks before her father leaves 
the room, visibly upset, and 
her grandmother 
cries 
ever 
so 

slightly. It’s such 
a tender family 
moment, it feels 
almost wrong to 
watch it. And yet, 
she 
invited 
us 

here.

The film is full 

of moments like this — personal 
to the point of intrusive. A 

telling scene is 
one in which she 
gets her makeup 
done while she’s 
on the doctor’s 
table, 
getting 

injections 
to 

stop the flare-
ups 
of 
her 

fibromyalgia. 
Moukarbel 
zooms 
in 
on 

her face in such 
moments, 
and 

she 
looks 
like 

she’s 
about 
to 

crack open. She’s 
still strong and 
collected, 
but 

just barely.

Gaga’s 

participation in 
her own privacy 
being disturbed 
is key to the 
documentary’s 
success. 
She’s 

spent almost a 
decade 
hiding 

herself 
behind 

layers 
of 

performance, 

to the point that her carefully 
constructed artifice was the 
performance itself. “Five Foot 
Two” is the latest in Gaga’s 
efforts to tear down those 
walls. The Gaga confessional 
project began in 2016 with 

the release of Joanne itself, 
an 
album 
that 
seemingly 

stripped her back to her roots: 
simple pop melodies, a bit of 
country and rock twang, live 
instrumentation.

Of course, this is a kind 

of performance in and of 
itself, but that doesn’t mean 
that the sentiment behind it 

isn’t 
genuine. 

You could be a 
cynic and watch 
“Five Foot Two” 
thinking 
she’s 

faking her pain, 
or 
that 
she’s 

curating an image 
of a “Real Gaga” 
that isn’t actually 

her. But in this film, Gaga has 
very little time for cynicism. 
She wants to be believed when 
she says she’s hurting.

If a viewer doesn’t buy into 

the film’s arguments for Gaga’s 
fundamental vulnerability, they 
can at least acknowledge the 
massive amounts of hard work 
she dedicates to her craft. Over 
and over, we see her continue 
dancing, singing and acting her 
way through awful physical 
and mental pain. She’s poked 
and prodded every minute of 
every day, and the work never 
stops.

“Five Foot Two” is kind 

of remarkable. It’s a genuine 
showcase of a brilliant artist’s 
life and personality, but it 
absolutely isn’t a vanity project, 
or an 100-minute screed about 
how tired she is and how hard 
she works. Gaga is not one to 
complain, and it’s clear how 
desperately and earnestly she 
loves what she does.

“I’m gonna fight like fucking 

hell for them to fucking love 
this,” she says days before her 
album is released. “Because it 
is fucking lovable.” It’s hard 
to argue with someone who 
believes so intently in what 
she’s making. That’s really the 
main takeaway from “Five Foot 
Two”: Lady Gaga means every 
word she says, completely and 
wholeheartedly. 
And 
that’s 

something you just can’t fake.

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A LIFETIME 
OF FULFILLMENT, LIFE INSURANCE 
AND A LIFETIME WARRANTY ON 

YOU NEW HONDA?

E-mail arts@michigandaily.com for 

information on applying.

ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer

“Gaga: Five 
Foot Two”

Streaming on 

Netflix

She’s spent 

almost a decade 
hiding herself 
behind layers of 
performance, to 
the point that 
her carefully 
constructed 

artifice was the 
performance 

itself

FILM REVIEW
DAILY CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN

Strange Beautiful Music: 

Coffeehouse classical

It’s been 10 years since New 

Music Detroit first began its 
annual concert series, Strange 
Beautiful Music, and as they 
pass this trail marker the 
musicians’ collective continues 
to 
provide 
an 
invaluable 

service to the Michigan arts 
scene — namely, featuring the 
work of composers who still 
draw breath.

Founded 
in 
2006, 
New 

Music Detroit is one of the 
most 
interesting 
cultural 

institutions in the Michigan 
classical 
music 
scene, 
and 

their trademark event is a 
yearly highlight for any lover 
of new music. After a decade 
of existence, Strange Beautiful 
Music remains the largest 
festival 
of 
contemporary 

classical music in the Midwest, 
though the format of the 
festival 
has 
been 
tweaked 

slightly. Over the years, the 
annual concert has sometimes 
fallen across two days, three 
days or — as was the case at last 
year’s wonderful performance 
— on a single, gargantuan day. 
For their decennial, NMD 
opted for the three day option, 
spreading the performances 
not only across a weekend 
but also across the city, at 
three 
separate 
locations. 

Each performance was gifted 
with skillful ensembles and 
compelling programs, but one 
of the downsides to the three 
day format (at least for me) is 
that my attendance was limited 
to a single day. It’s a bit of a 
trade off, a kind of low-stakes 
Russian roulette with your 
schedule. If the marathon is on 
one day and you have a conflict 
you miss the whole thing, but 
if it’s spread out and you’re not 
free for an entire weekend you 
have to miss at least some. But 
either way, attending any of 
the event is a true treat.

I was able to go to the Friday 

night 
performances, 
taking 

place at the Trinosophes, a 
coffeehouse / artistic space 
just south of Eastern Market in 
the heart of Detroit. The venue 
describes itself as industrial-
chic, and I suppose that’s more 
or less the best way to go about 
it. Made up of a large, concrete 
floored and high ceilinged 
room with a dividing wall 
down the middle, along the 
right wall past the entrance 
runs a wooden café bar, while 
the entire leftmost area beyond 
the dividing wall is dedicated 

to space for benches and chairs 
arranged in front of a medium-
sized stage. Along one side 
of the central wall there are 
several bookcases dedicated 
to 
housing 
the 
collections 

of 
several 
leftist 
figures 

affiliated with the coffeehouse 
and Detroit.

I travelled to Detroit with 

two friends, arriving about 
two hours into the evening. As 
we entered Trinosophes via 
the back door, we were greeted 
by the sound of cluster chords 
on the piano and what can 
only be described as the most 
avant-garde game of pattycake 

I have ever witnessed. At the 
piano sat Juxtatonal — a voice 
/ cello duo founded this year 
by Jocelyn Zelasko and Bryan 
Hayslett — playing “DiGiT 
#2,” a piece by Mayke Nas that 
involves alternately slamming 
the piano keys and slapping 
each others’ hands in time. 
The piece bears the seemingly-
paradoxical 
distinction 
of 

being simultaneously a concept 
which had never occurred to 
me and being exactly what I 
expected at Strange Beautiful 
Music. After Juxtatonal’s set 
was finished, I bought myself a 
chai and settled in for the next 
performers, a group called 
YAK.

YAK was very different from 

the previous set, but similarly 
experimental 
in 
nature. 

Another duo, the pair both 
wore grey/brown baseball caps 
with long, dangling strings 
of fabric that obscured their 
faces. It was rather yak-like, I 
suppose. The two played a set 
of ambient, improvisational 
music for strings, percussion 
and electronics, which tended 

to put one into a sort of trance-
like state.

As the evening progressed, 

the 
musical 
offerings 

continued in their variance 
and eclecticism. People would 
filter in and out of the concert 
freely, leaving for dinner and 
returning for another set. At 
some point I went out to get 
pizza, and when I returned 
I was treated to my personal 
highlight of the night, NMD’s 
own performance, featuring 
music by David Lang, Nico 
Muhly, Nik Bärtsch and Annie 
Gosfield. Each of the pieces 
played had something valuable 
to offer, but special praise 
must 
be 
directed 
towards 

Lang’s “little eye,” featuring 
Úna Fionnuala O’Riordan on 
cello, and two “modules” by 
Nik Bärtsch, all of which felt as 
if they enveloped the audience 
in a world of sound that was in 
some ways ritualistic.

The last set of the evening 

was provided by DJ Rebecca 
Goldberg, and members of the 
audience were invited to dance 
along with the music. A group 
of young people cleared away 
chairs to make a space for it, 
and for a good 20 minutes or 
so grooved along — perhaps 
longer, though I was no longer 
there to say (despite being a 
musician, I have an inherent 
ineptitude when it comes to 
dance, and consequently left 
fairly quickly).

But 
these 
inches 
of 

newspaper space aren’t really 
meant for me to review a 
concert I happened to like a lot: 
Rather, I’m supposed to offer 
an opinion about something in 
the classical music world. So 
here’s the thing that has been 
lying underneath the surface of 
the last 800 words — the future 
of classical music must contain 
ensembles 
like 
NMD 
and 

events like Strange Beautiful 
Music. In our ever-evolving, 
increasingly connected world, 
the art form can no longer rely 
on the traditional institutions 
and 
established 
mainstays 

of the classical music world. 
It has to move beyond the 
concert halls and opera houses 
and into the bookstores and 
coffeehouses: Plus, with any 
luck, an added bonus of going 
beyond the traditional High 
Temples of Culture® is that 
more people might wander in. 
So here’s to Strange Beautiful 
Music, and another 10 years.

DAYTON 

HARE

ACROSS
1 Roman jet?
4 Start of a
rhyming Basque
game
7 Reason to use
an inhaler
13 Knock
14 Cry buckets
15 Unexpected twist
16 The record
longest
continuous ride
on one is 105.57
miles
18 Unlikely to ride a
16-Across well
19 Hunted Carroll
critter
20 Balm-maker’s
plants
22 A.L. East team
23 Roman’s advice
to prevent an
explosion?
27 ’80s jeans
31 SOP part: Abbr.
32 “48 __”
33 Assistant who
didn’t exist in
Mary Shelley’s
novel
34 Whiskey order
36 “... beneath __
blue sky”: Don
Henley lyric
38 Stubborn equine
39 Roman variety
store? (and a hint
to 10 other
puzzle answers)
41 Perry’s creator
42 Dull finish
44 F-__
45 A hothead has a
short one
46 67.5 deg.
47 Item before a
door
49 Sack out
51 Roman
Shakespearean
drama?
54 Bargain bin abbr.
55 Bete __
56 Immature
dragonfly
59 Stereotypically
stylish
62 Leaves port
65 Facial feature
named after an
animal
66 Muscovite’s
denial
67 Whiskey option

68 They usually
leave the park
69 Key contraction
70 Roman graveyard
shift hour?

DOWN
1 R&B’s __ Hill
2 Soup aisle array
3 Roman bowler’s
target?
4 Roman musical
family?
5 Hole-making tool
6 Intestinal
7 Invite on a date
8 NutraSweet
competitor
9 Have faith in
10 Noodle topper?
11 “Les __”
12 At least one
14 “... truth is always
strange; / Stranger
than fiction” poet
17 “Willkommen”
musical
21 Words on a
reward poster
24 “... there’s __!”:
Hamlet
25 Intimidating words
26 Roman bike?
27 Roman “high”
request?

28 Exotic pet
29 Pre-Aztec
Mexican
30 Multi-armed
ocean critter
35 Bad picnic 
omen
37 Gets bent out of
shape
40 Roman Scrabble
Q-tile, e.g.?
43 Authorize
48 Dior designs

50 Secret hot date
52 Fed. bill
53 Simple question
type
57 Roman’s long
golf hole?
58 Casual greeting
59 “That stinks!”
60 Nanki-__
61 Bagpiper’s hat
63 Anatomical orb
64 Apollo lander,
briefly

By John Lampkin
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/29/17

09/29/17

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, September 29, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

