Directed by Eileen Yaghoobian. (14A) 94 min. Opens Nov 14 at the Royal (608 College).
The images in Died Young, Stayed Pretty are static but arresting — Eileen Yaghoobian’s documentary on North America’s rock-poster subculture is crammed with close-ups of handcrafted promo sheets for bands from Pearl Jam to Dead Moon and all points in between. This ostensible semiotic analysis of anti-establishment aesthetics features signifiers aplenty, but as arranged by Yaghoobian — a first-time director with an obvious enthusiasm for her subject matter — they don’t signify all that much.
It’s surely part of the film’s design that it limits its interviews to the DIYers who make up the underground poster-art community, and there are certainly some compelling figures here, like an artist who talks about maintaining a “quality of survival” — somewhat different from the more conventional “quality of life” — by trading his work for club cover charges and free beers rather than money. But Yaghoobian doesn’t push her subjects hard enough, and too often seems content to just listen to them ramble and rant about the joys of pissing off “squares,” as if peddling mimeographed genitalia were tantamount to revolution (or, even more dubiously, equivalent to the music it advertises).
The outsider posturing can get exhausting, as in an early scene where one particularly unpleasant designer shows off a feeble, dated photo collage of public figures who “just need to shut the fuck up” (physician, heal thyself). The result of Yaghoobian’s indulgence is a vivid but only semi-flattering portrait of a community that prides itself on the open exchange of concepts but comes off as painfully insular.