“Full-to-bursting … impressive and affecting.” (Variety)
Streaking onto the folk music scene as a teenager with a voice of astonishing purity and a staunch commitment to liberal causes, Joan Baez notes that she was often seen as the Virgin Mary. But she is much more complicated than this: intensely self-reflective, passionately committed, desperately anxious, hugely talented, unremittingly honest. Her Farewell Tour, undertaken at the age of 79, provides the framework for a compelling journey through her “sea of memory” spanning her breakthrough at Newport Folk Festival, her heroic involvement with the civil rights and anti-war movements, the heartbreak of her relationship with an impossibly young Bob Dylan, and the darkness that has dogged her family life. Fortunately Baez has been her own best archivist, providing a rich trove of home movies, audio tapes, drawings and other material to illustrate the life of a woman of immense talent, who is finally left with no cause left to fight for but herself.
“… anyone with an interest in the key artists of the counterculture movement will find much to appreciate here.” (The Hollywood Reporter)
“An up-close, intimate and mostly frank account of a career that arched across more than 60 years of musical and political expression while countless trends came and went, this elaborate documentary navigates adroitly through the professional and the personal aspects of a very full life, one marked by far more good fortune than bad … The film is rewarding for revealing a major cultural personality in a satisfying fullness.” (Deadline)