When I first saw “Barbie” last year (immediately after I saw “Oppenheimer” – the only way to do it), I had no idea that Indigo Girls would be featured so prominently. So, when Margot Robbie started singing “Closer to Fine” with a slightly off key, endearingly chipper timbre, I felt a surge of joy bubble up in my chest.
I wasn’t the only one – there was a palpable change in energy in the theater. People laughed, some people started singing along. Me? I started to cry a little bit. Indigo Girls seem to have this effect on people. I felt a similar urge to burst into tears the moment Alexandria Bombach’s documentary “It’s Only Life After All” began.
The film chronicles the duo’s rise to fame and the joys and challenges that came along the way. Throughout the film, but particularly in its opening moments, Bombach (who also served as editor) employs a very effective mechanism, cutting back and forth between old and new footage – between Amy Ray and Emily Saliers as they are now and as they were then, between concerts old and new, audiences singing along to “Galileo” just as fervently now as they were 30 years ago.
“It’s Only Life After All” lives by how successfully Bombach paints that contrast, the difference between someone at the beginning of a career and someone 30 years later. What do you learn in the time that has passed? How do you change, and how do you stay the same? Bombach is most successful at getting to the heart of these questions when she allows the archival footage not just to underscore, but to butt up against the way Ray and Saliers talk about their story now. Both Indigo Girls are fairly open about their experiences throughout the film, but what they’re willing to say in conversation with what can be pulled from the archives is by far the most interesting piece of the film – and speaks to what people find so compelling about them.
Ray is apparently to thank for the sheer wealth of photos, videos and recordings Bombach uses throughout the film. Bombach told Collider in January of last year that she didn’t know that Ray had a treasure trove of Indigo Girls memories stashed away in her basement until about eight months into filming. It’s hard to imagine the film without this archive – it’s so instrumental to informing the present-day interviews with Saliers and Ray that also accompany the film, to discovering what they think about themselves, their growth and their impact.
Those discoveries can be revealing, sad, funny, or sometimes all three. In a section where Saliers and Ray listen to some of their early songs, Saliers listens to a song she wrote in college called “Play It Again, Sam.” When I heard the song, I was struck by how frank and strong her voice was, how lovely the guitar playing was, even at such a young age. But Saliers hates it, physically wincing on screen when she thinks about it. A similar thing happens after a video of Ray playing “Blood and Fire.” That song is full of so much pain, and a very young Ray sings it with rawness and gravel in her voice. But her read of the song has evolved over the years – she was in a dark place when she wrote it, she says, and while she still often feels that way now, she finds the song a bit narcissistic. She says she wished she had tried to reach out and connect instead of turning inward on herself. “I wasn’t good enough at songwriting to do that,” she laments.
And yet, obviously, that ability to connect with people was already in both of them. There are countless people throughout the documentary who talk about how much Indigo Girls mean to them and why, whether the group be part of their coming out story, their marriage, or their mental health journey. Both Saliers and Ray accept this level of connection with graciousness, but you do get the sense they both still sometimes struggle with the fame that comes along with the good parts. “I’ve chosen this career,” Saliers says. “But I don’t really like being observed.”
But, by virtue of being two queer women succeeding in a male-dominated scene in the 1990s, they couldn’t help but be observed. The film underscores the astronomical pressure that came along with that attention with old interviews where Saliers and Ray address their sexuality over and over again, constantly dealing with casual homophobia and misogyny. There are a few videos of Ray in particular getting visibly upset with sound guys who either refuse to listen to her requests or scoff at her knowledge of the equipment she’s using. Her anger is understandable – even righteous, in a way. But her response in the present day is more measured. Her inability to stave off that anger during that time is something that embarasses her a bit, something she wished she learned how to do earlier.
There’s a tension between moments like these, between the emotion and insecurity of youth and the clarity of hindsight. Indigo Girls have meant so much to so many, but the thing that this documentary really lays bare is how hard it must have been, even with all the magic.
