The Pied Piper of Hützovina

Every documentary filmmaker has to be at least slightly in love with their subject. You don't have to subscribe to Albert Maysles' "love is all you need" approach to filmmaking, but some kind of love - ranging from universal human empathy to the kind of obsession it sometimes takes to get a film made - is pretty much a requirement.

In The Pied Piper of Hützovina (which I watched via the excellent new on-line rental service Jaman), director Pavla Fleischer takes that to 11. The film is about Eugene Hütz, frontman of the band Gogol Bordello. He's a Ukrainian-born, New York-based punk rocker obsessed with understanding his Roma heritage and reviving Gypsy music. He's also impossibly charismatic - the kind of guy women flutter to like moths to a flame.

Fleischer is one of those moths. She meets Hütz by chance on a car ride in Eastern Europe, falls head over heels, and decides that making a film about him would be a good way to get close to him. This we learn in her somewhat rueful narration over shaky video of that fateful car ride. Young Pavla looks so in love, we just know her fall is going to be harsh.

A year later, Fleischer has gotten Hütz to agree to the film project - a road trip through Ukraine and Russia to explore his roots and meet his musical heroes. But when she and her camera crew meet up with him to start the journey, it quickly becomes clear that Hütz has his own agenda and wants no part of her romantic plan.

To Fleischer's credit, she perseveres, and the film she ends up with isn't bad at all, if a little thin. Hütz delivers on the charisma part, jamming with Roma musicians in the Carpathian mountains, speaking seriously and emotionally about his passion for their music and culture, and arranging visits with various official keepers of the Gypsy music flame, not all of which go the way he expects. But there isn't much of an arc here; he's a guy with a guitar, on a quickie trip, with no goal and little at stake. So the story becomes as much Fleischer's as Hütz's: her disappointment, her attempts to stay connected and rescue her film. She doesn't protect herself or soft-pedal any of it, and her charm and honesty help us forgive the self-indulgence of using filmmaking as a seduction strategy.

I'm sure Fleischer learned a lot in the course of making this film: don't let your personal feelings cloud your judgment as a filmmaker; when you're directing in the field, don't dance until you're finished shooting; think through your structure and scenes before you shoot, or you'll end up having to put yourself in the film to recue it; etc.

She rescued her film pretty well. But on her next project, I bet she'll go easier on the love.