Becoming Led Zeppelin

Powered by awe-inspiring, psychedelic, never-before-seen footage, performances, and music, Bernard MacMahon’s experiential cinematic odyssey explores Led Zeppelin’s creative, musical, and personal origin story. The film is told in Led Zeppelin’s own words and is the first officially sanctioned film on the group.

A smooth assemblage of new and archival material, it introduces Led Zep’s own fab four — Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboard) and John Bonham (drums) — and sketches in their background, revisiting how they got into music and joined forces. After two hooky hours, it wraps up in January 1970 with a rousing concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall… The movie is anchored by a newly uncovered audio interview with Bonham and by contemporary chats with Page, Plant and Jones… the results are generally warm, relaxed and, every so often, a touch melancholic.

The director Bernard MacMahon and his co-writer, Allison McGourty, have gone deep into the archives and, with help from the editor Dan Gitlin and the sound supervisor Nick Bergh, come up with loads of images of the baby rockers at work and at play. As time skips forward, the future rock gods fall ever-deeper in love with music as they begin strumming, banging, singing and posing.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times