Courtesy Alexandria Bombach
Alexandria Bombach’s Indigo Girls documentary highlights Amy Ray and Emily Saliers’ authenticity.
The title of the Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All, by Santa Fe filmmaker Alexandria Bombach, does some heavy lifting. It’s a line from the Indigo Girls’ most famous song, “Closer to Fine,” but it also signals the film’s departure from traditional music biopics. The documentary is not a sweeping review of the Georgia-based musicians’ 40-year career; rather, it is an intimate look into who they are as people and the ways they have pushed back against stereotypes and misperceptions generated by the media, general public and even occasionally the queer community.
The film opens with a series of behind-the-scenes close-ups of the Indigo Girls. The focus alternates between Amy Ray and Emily Saliers and flips backward and forward in time to provide glimpses of them now and as they’ve been across the decades they’ve been making music together. This video collage is the first of many and is accompanied by TV static between clips, out-of-focus or coming-into-focus reels and grainy footage, all of which communicate the lack of artifice inherent to the film—and Ray and Saliers.
“So many documentaries are being paid for by the people in the film, which is not a documentary—that’s a commercial,” Bombach tells SFR. “I wanted to show and build that trust with the audience.”
This trust is demonstrated early in the film where Bombach can be heard, behind the camera, asking Ray and Saliers what it should be about. Ray laughs and tells Bombach it’s up to her and Saliers says she can’t wait to see it. Bombach’s choice to leave these moments in the documentary are unusual ones, but alongside similar moments where Ray and Saliers defer to the expertise of photographers and makeup artists, it’s clear they aren’t controlling their image. In one scene, when a photographer asks if they’re OK with unusual shots, Ray responds, “I like the artsy stuff, the weird stuff.”
The ways the Indigo Girls have been perceived by mass media and American culture as whole, has, until fairly recently, tried to box them in. They were—and still are—accused of “earnestness” and being too political and outspoken. In one old interview reel, a TV interviewer asks Ray why they aren’t getting played more on radio, but keeps interrupting her as she tries to explain the impacts of homophobia and misogyny. Later, in a current day clip, they reflect on a vicious 1989 review in The New York Times. Saliers and Ray each laugh, bristle and ultimately, reflect.
“I did have some stagy self-congratulatory gestures!” Ray says in the film.
Aside from the concert clips sprinkled throughout the documentary, Ray and Saliers are rarely in the frame together; instead, their perspectives are captured in parallel—a choice that highlights how vastly different they are and allows them space to reflect on their deep respect for each other and on their individual struggles. Ray shares that she wrestles with gender dysphoria and internalized homophobia, and Saliers talks about her alcoholism, shame and feelings of diminishment as a queer parent. These moments are intimate and offer a vulnerability that affirms their humanity, and the viewers’. We are, it turns out, all in this together.
The single request Ray and Saliers made of Bombach was to capture a story that was larger than just themselves. As they reiterated, their communities and contexts mattered. This shows up in the film in the form of ‘80s and ‘90s bedroom sets featuring old TVs flickering with news of the AIDS crisis, queer rights and other political and cultural touchpoints. Later, Bombach weaves in footage of Standing Rock and a protest of a Confederate statue in Alabama—just two causes on a very long list the Indigo Girls continue to support physically, financially and musically.
Ray and Saliers credit John Blizzard, owner of the Little Five Points Pub in Atlanta, with modeling community engagement and activism. Later, meeting environmentalist Winona LaDuke shifted their understanding away from what they jokingly call “white girl environmentalism” toward a deeper awareness of what environmental justice should look like. With LaDuke, the Indigo Girls founded Honor the Earth to support Indigenous communities responding to environmental racism and injustice. For all their humility—and yes, earnestness—throughout the film, their self-reflection and willingness to learn from others makes them, in turn, models for viewers.
Instead of interviewing celebrities and critics, Bombach interviewed fans.
“I had to make the choice of who I was making this film for,” she says.
Of course, the fans love the Indigo Girls for the same reasons I do. For all of us, their music has been the soundtrack to our lives and has helped us through the hardest obstacles we’ve faced, including—for many of us—a recognition of our queerness. And as evidenced by the reception of It’s Only Life After All at the sold-out screening on April 10 at Violet Crown Cinema, it serves as an excellent introduction to new Indigo Girls fans, too.
It’s Only Life After All: Various times Friday, April 19-Friday, April 26 Screenings April 19-21 will be followed by a Q&A with Bombach). $10. Violet Crown Cinema, 1606 Alcaldesa St., (505) 216-5678
Emily Withnall first saw the Indigo Girls perform in Santa Fe at age 14 and she still can’t stop talking about it. Her essays and articles can be read at emilywithnall.com.
