Paul Simon Faced Unexpected Struggles. Cameras Were Rolling.

“That was a beautiful second that Andy intuited and put collectively,” Gibney stated. “The distinction between that love after which the bitterness laid over that candy second captured in a poetic approach the ebb and circulation of time and reminiscence, happiness and disappointment, all rolled into one.”

According to Simon, the inspiration for “Seven Psalms” got here to him in a dream in 2019. Gibney filmed him as he rehearsed and recorded the album in Wimberley, Austin, Houston and New York, directed singers and instrumentalists, and sang alongside his spouse, the musician Edie Brickell.

The filmmakers additionally pored via a whole bunch of hours of audiotapes and archival footage and hundreds of pictures, many from Simon’s personal assortment. Simon lived a lot of his life in entrance of the digicam, so it was much less a matter of discovering, say, footage of him singing “Cecilia,” than it was of selecting which model out of dozens of them was one of the best.

The film presents a wealth of fascinating trivia, similar to how the actor Charles Grodin directed the documentary “Simon and Garfunkel: Songs of America” in 1969, after which appeared as a Garfunkel impersonator, full with a wig, alongside Simon in a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Or how the organizers of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival anticipated Simon and Garfunkel, in addition to fellow acts Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, to “carry out with out price.”

As for the songs, there are a lot of, and plenty of of them performed at size (everything of “American Tune”; Aretha Franklin’s highly effective 1971 cowl of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”). Simon’s discography is so in depth and hit-filled that “Kodachrome” — “Kodachrome”! — doesn’t even make an look. “It’s already a three-and-half-hour film,” Grieve stated. “If we put in each wonderful track, you’d have a 10-part collection.”

For Gibney, who has made many movies through the years about villains and cheats, corruption and deception, with the ability to inform the story of such a beloved songwriter was a welcome change. “I really like his music, so this was a labor of affection within the truest sense,” he stated.