Documentary | Sinéad O’Connor: the disturbing woman

Nothing Compares, a documentary on Sinéad O’Connor premiered at Sundance, comes at a time when the singer is experiencing a tragedy: her youngest son has killed himself, and she herself has just been hospitalized after making suicidal remarks. Without dwelling on the dramas experienced by the Irish artist, the film attempts to portray a woman who has always taken a stand and disturbed. Decryption in six steps.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

Towards success

Nothing Compares focuses on the era when Sinéad O’Connor rose to fame with his albums The Lion and the Cobra (1987) and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990). Director Kathryn Ferguson never shows the faces of the people who tell the singer’s story today. We only see Sinéad through excerpts from interviews or concerts dating back around 30 years, to which are juxtaposed archival footage illustrating the context in which she grew up and enjoyed success.

bruised young girl

“My mother was a beast”, summarizes Sinéad, in the film. Her childhood was marked by the violence of this mother who abused her and sometimes forced her to sleep outside when she was very young. She suffered further abuse as a teenager, when she was placed in one of Ireland’s convents intended for the re-education – often confinement – ​​of “lost” young girls, now recognized as places of assaults. Kathryn Ferguson does not dwell much on this episode. Sinead, however, told the magazine Spin in 2020 that these were the scariest times of his life.

First middle finger

Sinéad caught the attention of Ensign Records by playing in a Dublin band. His professional debut is marked by a collaboration that the documentary does not mention: Heroin, song co-written in 1986 for a film with The Edge (U2). She is already pregnant when she completes her first album. Her record company pushes her to have an abortion, says John Reynolds, father of the child. Sinéad refuses. She also opposes the image of a pop singer cute that we want to impose on him. Two decades before Britney Spears, she shaves her hair.

International pop icon

Nothing Compares 2 U, a song written by Prince, made Sinéad O’Connor a planetary star at the turn of the 1990s. go. Sinéad does not understand, at the time, that people are interested in his songs. She nevertheless gains in confidence and refuses more and more compromise. The film shows that it is not a sham: Sinéad is sincere, even in provocation.

Breakpoints

Her descent begins when she refuses that the American national anthem be broadcast before one of her concerts in New Jersey. Bush Sr. had just launched a military operation in Iraq. Sinéad’s gesture is seen as an affront to American patriotism. She is also withdrawing from the Grammy Awards to distance herself from an industry that she believes chooses money over principles. We also remember this moment when she tears up a photo of the pope Saturday Night Live, but forgetting the context, which the documentary recalls: the scandals of sexual assaults committed and camouflaged by the Church begin to emerge. Sinéad displays his convictions, but becomes a target. His career will never recover.

Incomplete story

The most interesting aspect of Kathryn Ferguson’s film is the way it dissects Sinéad’s revolt at this period of her life. She identifies with her country, which she perceives as a child attacked, in particular by the Church, but also as a place of confinement for women. The documentary also shows the coherence of the artist and the gestures she makes in her fights against racism and the Catholic Church, or for women’s rights. She is particularly committed to free choice in the abortion debate in Ireland. Sinéad thinks she’s inconvenient because she’s a woman. His speech is clear, eloquent, and far from the caricature that will be made of it later.

Nothing Compares on the other hand has a big defect: it stops around 1993. Sinéad however has not stopped making music or being a public figure for 30 years. Her trajectory still raises many questions: why was she ordained a priest in a marginal branch of Catholicism after having fought so much against this religion? Why did she later convert to Islam? How does she adhere to these institutions after having denounced the patriarchy so much? What emptiness or what convictions motivate these choices? Kathryn Ferguson offers no answer. She does a lot to rehabilitate the Irish artist, seeks to make her a precursor, but remains too often on the surface to support her point and gives the impression of abandoning her subject along the way. A good half hour is missing from his film to tie up all the threads and measure the artistic and social influence of Sinéad O’Connor.

Nothing Compares, documentary by Kathryn Ferguson, 1:33 a.m., is presented at the Sundance festival and accessible online until Monday, 10 a.m.