3 Takeaways from ‘Mitski: The Land’
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When Mitski released her last album, 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, she set aside much traditional promotion, instead setting up a limited series of listening parties in theaters paired with films like Days of Heaven and Desert Hearts that accompanied the sparse Americana landscapes her new songs conjured. Since then, one of the album’s songs, “My Love Mine All Mine,” blew up on TikTok and landed the songwriter over a billion streams. Not too bad for a deeply personal project that on the surface wasn’t quite as commercial as some of her indie rock releases like Puberty 2 and Be the Cowboy.
Now, Mitski closes this period of her artistic journey with her own theatrical concert, Mitski: The Land. We were lucky to see the limited release and had a few takeaways.
Balancing Intimacy and Stardom
Any new concert film is bound to be compared to Taylor Swift’s domination of AMC theater screens, but The Land stays true to the music. Apart from some quippy banter here and there, including light digs at the stern dads and ungrateful boyfriends in the audience, there are no asides for interviews or making-of featurettes. The focus remains on documenting the concert experience, where she holds center stage on a raised platform with her backing band surrounding her. If you missed her brief, sold-out tour, this is as close as you’re going to get.
A Theater Kid at Heart
As Cinema Sugar co-founder and editorial director Kevin Prchal puts it, “Mitski performs as if summoning all the earth’s theater kid energy.” Throughout the concert, Mitski doesn’t go full-on David Byrne or musical theater, but creates oblique storytelling through lyrical dance and light props like chairs. Mitski’s live spectacle can create both rapid fans and detractors who might feel too distant from the music, yet it’s nice to see someone carry the torch for live music showmanship in today’s day and age.
The Continued Relevance of the Concert Film
Thanks to YouTube concert footage that ranges from pretty solid festival streams to your drunk uncle who still has an iPhone 2 somehow howling along to a Van Halen cover band, the concert film these days tends to only be reserved for extra special events in an artist’s career or for megastars like, again, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé.
The Land isn’t aiming to be a grand Stop Making Sense statement. Still, the power of its direction and editing elevate it beyond mere documentation of the show’s experience or a Special Edition add-on. Director Grant James, cinematographer Drake Harthun, and Editor Ben Montez work within the context of the stage and lighting setup while adding their own spin, bouncing back and forth between color and black-and-white photography, or fragmenting and framing the band with falling, puzzle-like shapes.
For a concert that is still packed with theatricality, the crew either finds quiet asides that reinforce that sense of intimacy or “manufactures” them. Here and there, The Land will slow down the frame rate and take advantage of dramatic lighting to create these brief scenes where Mitski feels like she’s lingering in a Wong Kar-wai film like Chungking Express or In the Mood for Love. In these fleeting moments, rather than watching the theatrical dancing or the guitarist rip out a noise rock solo, I truly felt transported into the forlorn, lonely backroads of America that Mitski’s songs conjured.