I first saw and discovered The National on their “High Violet” tour opening for Arcade Fire. Their music was deep, mournful, abstract and quietly intense (before becoming loudly intense), and you might suspect that Matt Berninger and company are really just brooding basket cases of emotion and darkness.
But at that show Berninger paused after a particularly riotous number and threw jellybeans into the audience. “Be sure to pick those up,” he said, “They each have a new MP3 track in them… by The Flaming Lips.” You don’t quite realize that they’re funny, quirky, aloof and more like their Midwestern selves than whatever you expect of a rock star.
The new rock-doc “Mistaken for Strangers” sheds light into this side of The National, but it does so by profiling the even bigger goofball behind the scenes, Director and Matt’s brother Tom Berninger. Though he resembles his tall, lanky and hipster brother Matt, Tom is shorter, fatter and has longer hair, and he could very well be portrayed in a movie by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
He’s made an oddball, meta and awkwardly funny documentary not unlike his own goofy personality. “Mistaken for Strangers” has more to do with Tom than the band itself, and in that way it gives us a more heartwarming portrait of The National than concert footage alone ever could.