Collin's approach to this incendiary material is both blatant and oblique - a bit like Lee's playing itself. Thankfully, we hear quite a bit of that playing in the film.
Collin's exceptional, atmospheric film avoids the hysteria and hyperbole of similar true crime documentaries to usher this delicate story in with a palpable sense of sorrow rather than a desire to retroactively point the finger of justice.
This is, like Tracy Chapman's song 'Fast Car,' a quintessential American story, full of promise, hope, heartbreak, tragedy and racism. It is a tragic, confounding and touching story, well told.
"I Called Him Morgan" works as a jazz documentary as well as a bizarre true crime tale about a mysterious crime of passion. All these years later, many questions remain.
[I Called Him Morgan is] a film that is more than just another story about a flawed artist who dies young. You have something that is far closer to a work of art.
Musicians sometimes paraphrase Debussy, or one another, in saying that music is the silence between the notes. I Called Him Morgan has it all -- the notes and the silence, plus the music of spoken language, pitched in rueful tones of recollection.
It's rare that a film makes you feel so acutely in its brief run-time, covering albums and addictions alike, but I Called Him Morgan accomplishes just that.
