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Ramblin' Jack Elliott has been many things in the course of a life now nearing the end of its seventh decade: trucker, sailor, cowboy, storyteller, ladies man, eccentric, iconoclast, and a folksinger-guitarist who's considered the link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. What he hasn't been is much of a father, and that becomes the poignant focus of this documentary directed, written, coproduced, and narrated by his daughter, Aiyana. The film includes plenty of material (home movies, performance footage both old and new, interviews with friends, family, and Elliott himself, etc.) about Elliott's life, and a remarkable life it's been. Born Elliot Charles Adnopoz in 1931, son of a Jewish doctor from Brooklyn, he left home to become a cowboy, eventually becoming Guthrie's protégé and a minor legend in his own right who was well-known in England in the '50s and on the scene during the early '60s folk boom in New York. His own irresponsibility and lack of ambition and focus kept him from being a bigger name, and those are the same flaws that have afflicted his relationship with his daughter. "I can't remember having an actual conversation with my dad," Aiyana says, and by the end of the film that still seems to be the case. In what may be the most telling moment here, she asks her mother (one of Elliott's four wives) if Ramblin' Jack "had any talents as a father." What follows is a long, bemused pause... and no response at all. A fascinating document, but not one that you'd call uplifting. --Sam Graham
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