Dolly Parton: Here I Am (2019)

Dolly Parton is an amazing musician and I know she had to go through significant hardships due to her appearance, and that's what I wanted to see in this documentary. However, this is more a series of interviews with friends (?) of hers retelling their memories with a few pictures and some videos through time to support them. It's not really my style as it keeps jumping back and forth between the past and present, as opposed to a documentary that has a steady flow of past events all the way to the present.

As such, the documentary is not for me, even though it was an interesting peek into her life.

There is something really quite manicured about this film on Dolly Parton, and at no point did I feel that we were learning anything about her that wasn’t already in the public domain or that she didn’t want us to know. What it does show us is an expertly curated compendium of her appearances, though, and right from her early appearances with Porter Wagoner she comes across as a woman determined to make it on her own terms. Her lyrics clearly demonstrate her views about the role of women in the family and in society, but she is not an overt feminist. Indeed, though she readily acknowldges her friendships with folks of colour or who are gay, she is shrewd enough to appreciate that those “who love her” (as Jane Fonda put it) might well be deeply and politically conservative, and so she keeps her powder dry - publicly, at least - on matters that might see her bite the hands that feed her. As it progressed, I didn't feel any the wiser about whom this lady really is, beyond the self-deprecating charmer that she constantly portrays. Even her co-stars from “Nine to Five” (1980) admit they never saw her without her “regalia” and many of the musicians who had worked with her for years had never met her husband, nor give the impression that they were ever her intimates. It wasn't that I wanted anything salacious, nor even gossipy, but something quite this well planned and executed only exposes one side of the performer to us, and for that we could just have watched a few of her concerts. She hints at a few more personal elements, and you wonder if “Jolene”, for example, is partly autobiographical, but these are but crumbs for anyone wishing to get to know the real Dolly Parton. It’s watchable enough, but I felt it more of an obituary in waiting made by a star who wanted to make sure she was remembered how she wanted to be.