I can easily recall the first time someone played me a Rage Against the Machine record, because it was the same person that introduced me to Public Enemy, during about the same period in 1991. The initial reaction I had to both was similar: Heavy beats, raw guitar, and a strong front-man with a big voice. Rage Against the Machine - Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest is a film about RATM and tangentially about protest. Whether RATM is a group that you can buy as an enduring voice of protest probably has to do with your perspective. Living during the '90s as a kid in college, especially on a liberal and politicized campus, meant being exposed to frequent expressions of outrage against sociopolitical dysfunction. We also heard a lot of heavy music. Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest does a nice job of pointing out that while RATM was a great commercial success with its brand of heavy angry music, it also used the stage as a platform to trumpet various causes. By the end of a decade capped by the Seattle WTO rioting, RATM had done a pretty good job of providing the soundtrack to much of the nation's disaffected youth, a noise that had more teeth than ever in the media by 1999. The band went up in smoke very soon after, so we have only the historical record of three albums and some recent attempts to drive political causes forward by the band's leaders, Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha.

Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest is fun to watch if you were a RATM fan, but never went very far beyond just enjoying the music. It's also a good film to watch if you're interested in how RATM fit into the broader context of "protest music." None of the interviews done for the film are with actual band members, but there are some studio jockeys that share interesting perspectives and pop-culturists that have been busy in the intervening years crafting the band's narrative for our historical record. It's good to have a fresh and recent perspective on RATM , but there is some question (posed indirectly in the film) about whether their particular brand of political activism is still relevant, and whether they actually moved anyone to take political or social action back in their day. We can look at the political action behind Obama's campaign and see that people were galvanized, but not by raw, blind anger. RATM developed some specific causes that are detailed in this film, but the commentary here also points out that de la Rocha's brand of activism sometimes seemed to be simple "anti," without a clear purpose. In some ways, this attitude did play a role in the 44th Presidential Election, but now there are large issues on the table that we are all focused on resolving, rather than just a vague sense of pulling down the status quo.

What's missing from Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest is more in-depth analysis of RATM as compared to other modern rock groups. Parallels to Woody Guthrie are strangely made throughout the film, even though there are numerous modern bands that were broadcasting messages for sociopolitical change at the same time as RATM. Supergroup U2 comes to mind as a band that was intensely political before, during, and after the period that RATM was together, but almost no mention is made of other bands like this. Perhaps the issue was not having interviewees prepared to speak on these others bands, or perhaps it was a fear that RATM's legacy might seem a bit pale when held up next to a more prolific and enduring band like U2. There's little here in the way of special features, other than bios, but the feature film is lengthy and full of good footage from the band's heyday. Especially for core fans of RATM, Rage Against the Machine - Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest is a mannered but well produced look at a group that took heavy music into thinking man's territory for a not-so-brief period. There's no denying their commercial success, but Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest will be fodder for some heated debate about the long term significance of RATM. Protest music moves on, and seems bigger than ever before. Buried under the Hannah Montanas and Jonas Brothers of the world are new generations of angry rockers with something to say, just waiting for their biographers to arrive.