Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind is a 2022 archival documentary film about American singer-songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis directed by Ethan Coen and edited by Tricia Cooke.

Synopsis

The documentary combines pre-existing interviews with Lewis at different stages of his life and career with performance footage, and interviews with other people such as Myra Lewis Williams, his ex-wife and cousin, and country singer Mickey Gilley who was also his cousin.^[1]

Production

Coen and Cooke were approached by T-Bone Burnett during the COVID-19 pandemic with the idea of making an archival documentary with a process that could be completed at home, which was appealing at a time of widespread isolation and withdrawal from public activities. Coen described the idea as "too compelling to turn down". Cooke described it as "like a home movie project."^[2][3]

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 17 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10.^[4] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[5]

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian said it was "thoroughly enjoyable" and that it "does something very few films can: it makes you grin with pleasure."^[6] The Hollywood Reporter describes "a video mixtape chock-full of performances showing how even a man who rarely wrote his own songs could earn a place in the rock’n’roll pantheon. And that’s literally all it is.. Coen makes no effort to clear up the mythology [around Lewis]…Trouble in Mind may appeal mainly to roots-rock diehards and Coen Brothers super-completists".^[7] Owen Gliebermann in Variety acknowledges Coen "uses almost nothing but old performance and TV-interview clips" but that he "combines them artfully, syncing them to his own pleasure centers—and ours."^[8]

Release

The film was shown at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2022.^[9]