Will Penn strikes a chord with Sarah Share’s music documentary The Graceless Age: The Ballad of John Murry.
John Murry, the Mississippi-born singer-songwriter now living in rural Longford, is a rare figure in modern music. He’s unflinchingly honest, deeply sensitive, and unafraid to confront the darkest corners of his life through song. His work, shaped by trauma, addiction and redemption, strips away pretence to reveal something raw and profoundly human. As his producer says in the film, “it is rare to see someone so open”.
It is this fine-tuning to pain that strikes such poignant notes across Sarah Share’s documentary. The Graceless Age tracks the eponymous singer through his life, from confused and emotional child navigating adoption to a teenager experimenting with drugs and music. At every stage, John Murry is a conduit for the darkness in our world, a canary in the coalmine of our times.
The film returns often to this rawness and the character who feels so deeply. For Murry, it is unclear, as an adopted child, whether this gift is genetic or learned. Adopted into the Faulkner family, he emerges as an artist deeply attuned to injustice and suffering. In one of the documentary’s most intriguing moments, a fan emotionally recounts over coffee in a roadside gas station how Murry’s music provided catharsis during her darkest hours – a testament to how his willingness to inhabit pain creates a sanctuary for others experiencing similar struggles. There are fascinating parallels between Murry and William Faulkner, and the film explores the connections between two creatives whose work focuses on the meek of the world with dignity and respect.
But heavy lies the crown for the sensitive artist. Murry details his washing up on the shores of Ireland following years of drug abuse and turmoil. Beautiful shots of Ireland’s Atlantic coast serve as the backdrop for his re-emergence, contrasting sharply with the American South of his upbringing. In this pastoral setting, far from his Southern roots, Murry seems to have found not escape but clarity about his role in the world, when he observes with quiet resignation, “there have to be people who bleed more than they draw blood”. The documentary explores Murry’s trajectory as an artist balancing this vulnerability, wrestling with it, only to finally embrace it on stranger shores. The great, and endlessly quotable, Father John Misty once said, “this is a realisation that people deal with in different ways. If someone is sensitive, it can be a deadly realisation.” The film explores Murry’s relationship with this idea, suggesting that he is someone who now wears his sensitivity as a shield.
The Graceless Age isn’t without the odd bum note. Structurally, the film suffers from certain pacing issues, throwing viewers into the life of this multifaceted musician without first establishing the necessary context about his work or creative journey. It also attempts to balance numerous complex thematic threads. Murry candidly examines racism in the American South, delving into moments where he benefited from racial privilege at the expense of Black friends. He touches on his complicated family heritage as an adopted member of the Faulkner lineage, and unflinchingly recounts his battles with addiction. These fascinating excursions offer glimpses into his worldview, but the documentary doesn’t delve deeper. At times, Murry also makes broad assertions about humanity’s wickedness that feel at odds with the more optimistic tone of the film.
Nonetheless, there are memorable moments in which he re-enacts visions of a child visiting him in his dreams, or illustrated sequences of his abuse in a youth drug rehabilitation centre, created with Irish graphic designer Stephen Morton. Another moving scene features Beverly McAlilly from his church’s choir; they sing “Were You There”, and Murry describes how her actions set him on his musical path. These are windows into his deep inner world, reaching meaningfully into the unconscious self and the transcendent power of music and imagination. They serve as powerful testaments to the ineffable way memory ossifies into identity – suggesting that throughout his journey, Murry has come to believe his destiny was shaped not by genetic inheritance, but by the raw experiences that have transformed his life.
The Graceless Age presents a compelling portrait of an artist whose sensitivity acts as both burden and gift – a man who has survived darkness to translate it into something beautiful and true.
In cinemas 2nd May 2025.
