Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind is a 2022 archival documentary film about American singer-songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis directed by Ethan Coen and edited by Tricia Cooke.

Synopsis

The documentary combines pre-existing interviews with Lewis at different stages of his life and career with performance footage, and interviews with other people such as Myra Lewis Williams, his ex-wife and cousin, and country singer Mickey Gilley who was also his cousin. ^[1]

Production

Coen and Cooke were approached by T-Bone Burnett during the COVID-19 pandemic with the idea of making an archival documentary with a process that could be completed at home, which was appealing at a time of widespread isolation and withdrawal from public activities. Coen described the idea as "too compelling to turn down". Cooke described it as "like a home movie project." ^{[2] [3]}

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 17 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10. ^[4] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. ^[5]

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian said it was "thoroughly enjoyable" and that it "does something very few films can: it makes you grin with pleasure." ^[6] The Hollywood Reporter describes "a video mixtape chock-full of performances showing how even a man who rarely wrote his own songs could earn a place in the rock’n’roll pantheon. And that’s literally all it is.. Coen makes no effort to clear up the mythology [around Lewis]…Trouble in Mind may appeal mainly to roots-rock diehards and Coen Brothers super-completists". ^[7] Owen Gliebermann in Variety acknowledges Coen "uses almost nothing but old performance and TV-interview clips" but that he "combines them artfully, syncing them to his own pleasure centers—and ours." ^[8]

Release

The film was shown at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2022. ^[9] The film had an official public release on Prime Video in the United States on February 14, 2024.

See also

• Great Balls of Fire! – 1989 biopic about Jerry Lee Lewis

References

External links

• Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind at IMDb