“You aren’t required to be famous to stand out,” is the inspiring statement that has really hit me, given that I have attended and watched a heartwarming doc titled: Resynator by Alison Tavel. Movies like Dick Johnson is Dead, Sr, Last Flight Home have so much in common, which includes a strained halting relationship with a parent, animations, home movies and other aspects. Pour this mix humbly into a pot and present it as a documentary to SXSW and bingo! While Resynator follows these peculiar conventions to a T, it manages to present the story in such a gripping manner, that it has certainly left a lasting impact on me.
The character of Tavel, who is in her twenties and a touring musician, begins and concludes the tale with a captivating story of how she met her family and her childhood. She has always been curious about her father; her father collapsed in a vehicle crash when she was only ten weeks. Her father was said to be an inventor of the synthesizer, which, as Tavel later discovered, was not entirely accurate. He was, however, one of the inventors of the Resynator, which is a mix between a synthesizer and a prototype that changes organic audio outputs into electronic sounds. He does, however, invest significant resources in supporting and marketing, once even establishing contact with Peter Gabriel, but the invention quickly died out. The device had been considered missing for a long time, only to be discovered later by Ali, while she was exploring through the attic. This is how Tavel explains to Resynator why she is looking for this device; in the same way she was trying to figure out who her father is.
The creators of “Resynator” reveal a lot that is interesting for music-tech enthusiasts such as Minimoog lovers: Tavel and her friends discover new and fascinating aspects of the device’s infancy and its marketing while tinkering with it. As Tavel fixes the device, we see a wide array of artists, including Gotye and Fred Armisen, trying it out, and the end results of all this is a cool montage of a new generation of musicians as they begin to use a different approach to making music.
Even so,” Resynator” contains its most sonorous notes when focusing on Tavel and her task of repairing the predecessor by repairing her attitude towards her parentage. Even though she had a friendly STEPDAD, she was not at all inclined to seek and understand who the true Don was, she had always seen him as an eccentric whose biography had something to do with music mysticism. Through her conversations with her mother and grandmother, as well as her mother’s former business partner, and others, it appears as though “Resynator” fails to completely capture the history of an artist misfit Renaissance man. Certainly as brilliant as he was as a musician he often suffered from bouts of depression, suicidal ideation, and a cracked self-loathing parent who cared for him but did not love him. The disintegration of Tavel’s onion layers is very personal and intense, particularly during the few painful moments where she retrieves her mother’s letters because, “I never wanted her to form a negative opinion of him,” confessional letters that Tavel’s mother hid from her.
Interspersed with such riveting ideas is Tavel’s intrigue which in turn becomes ours and she is always there holding us as we cross each new epiphany with such an attractive speed; other than these few clumsy animation sequences which like reminiscing some American Idol-styled introductions of Don as a superman that Tavel idolizes; “Resynator” flows really well with its layering of sequences in its narrative as well as its pacing out of the nuances mindfully planned.
As Tavel’s understanding of her father deepens she is also seen to ask herself many questions surrounding her conscience: What made her never give up on her father? Was it worth it to build this broken machine again, after it was scrapped back in the 1980s? Isn’t bringing back Don through Resynator quite similar in its context?
For the documentary named “Resynator’‘ rather than feeling as though it is revolutionizing the era because of the device, it is how it manages to incorporate love and a sense of humor which distinguishes it in a very competitive market. In most cases with personal documentaries, they tend to feel such as their no sense of critique in their self admiration. In Tavel’s case, she is able to avoid that. Her approach carries a more meshed narrative which adds a sense of comfort to her work. In a way, her work feels closer to the reality of life. She’s able to combine her understanding of not just herself rather her father by amalgamating such devices. The box gives the impression of being too soft.
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