There are movies you enjoy and then there are movies that completely overwhelm you. Pavements did just that to me. I've been crying from the first second to the last, carried away by emotion, memory, and music. This is not just a documentary; it's a strange and beautiful hallucination about my all-time favorite band, Pavement, and about Stephen Joseph Malkmus, who's long been something between a musical idol and an emotional reference point for me.
The film is not made to convince new fans. It doesn't explain much, nor does it follow a clear linear narrative. It's messy, meta, ironic, sometimes even absurd-but deeply heartfelt. Some will adore it, others will detest it or simply not understand a thing. But for those of us who have carried Pavement in our veins since the '90s, it feels like a gift. A rare, chaotic, and unpredictable gift, just like the band itself.
I found it bold, innovative, and refreshingly different from typical rock docs. There's a museum (both real and surreal), there's a jukebox musical, and there's even a fake biopic that hilariously hits every cliché of the genre while still conveying the real drama behind the band's history. And in between, the music-always the music-guiding every emotional beat, every twist of nostalgia. When Circa 1762 started playing, I broke down. It's one of my favorite, most overlooked songs from their catalog, and hearing it in this context felt like a private message.
If I miss something, it's that Carrot Rope doesn't close the film. That song, that farewell disguised as a joke, would have been the perfect ending. But maybe that's also part of the spirit of Pavement: never giving the expected, always choosing the offbeat road.
Would I love for them to reunite for real, to tour again, to make a movie, to turn the museum into something permanent? Of course. But for now, this film is enough to make me cry like the first time I heard Gold Soundz. A kaleidoscopic, loving tribute to a band that changed my life-and continues to do so.
