'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector'

With the amount of stuff that's already been said and written about Phil Spector, I hadn't a clue what director Vikram Jayanti had up his sleeve when he produced "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector," his 2008 documentary that is just now screening at the Film Forum in Manhattan. What a delight to find that Jayanti -- who must have been as big a Spector fan growing up as I was -- somehow managed to employ Spector's Wall of Sound theory into his filmmaking, with an "everything but the kitchen sink" documentary that simultaneously shows clips of a pre-conviction interview with the normally reclusive music genius, snippets of the trial and crime scene of the horrific murder of actress Lana Clarkson, while playing full-length Spector classics ("Da Doo Run Run," "He's a Rebel," "To Know Him Is To Love Him"), complete with intricate subtitles of critics' assessment of the songs changed music forever. The effect is overwhelming -- not unlike a Phil Spector single -- stimulating your eyes, brain, ears and heart all at once to create a kind of stimulation like no other film you've seen before. (Imagine seeing a photo of a beautiful blond woman slumped in a glamorous chair with a bullet-wound through her head while "Be My Baby" blares in the background.) The film doesn't entirely dwell on the past -- Ronnie's name is not even mentioned -- also focusing on the matter at hand, the second-degree murder trial he is in the midst of as cameras rolled. That Spector -- who repeatedly compares himself to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bach and Galileo -- comes across as bright, funny and, at times, oddly self-aware does not detract from his obvious deep-seated anger, paranoia and delusional behavior, but it does help explain his ability to continue seducing women nearly 40 years after his moment on top of the world, and perhaps what led Miss Clarkson to make that fatal decision to accompany Spector home one night in 2003.