‘Junun’ has Paul Thomas Anderson going to India with part of Radiohead

Concert documentaries are practically as old as the sitar, and films set in recording studios not much newer than that.

But the music is the thing, and there are many things, from many different places, in “Junun,” a jolting jam session of a picture directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The piece, which premiered at the New York Film Festival Thursday night, features Radiohead rocker Jonny Greenwood, Israeli hybrid Shye ben Tzur and local Indian talent — a whole lot of local Indian talent — playing music, taking brief pauses, then playing more music at a fort in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

Less a fully realized piece of cinema than a snapshot of a cultural crossroads (it clocks in at just 54 minutes, basically the length of an album), “Junun” nonetheless is a horn- and percussion-filled release of East meets West musicalia.

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The project began when Anderson heard from Greenwood’s wife Sharona, an Israeli who’s friends with Ben Tzur, that some new musical adventures lay ahead. She and Greenwood were headed to see Ben Tzur — who has lived in India for years and combines Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi and other forms of music — to play/record tunes with him and a group of local musicians known as the Rajasthan Express. Anderson decided to pick up some cameras and film them.

That proved to be harder than it sounded, starting with the cameras, most of which didn’t make it through customs. “And renting gear in India is complicated,” Anderson said after the screening. “You have to request something three or four days in advance and then expect when it gets there it will be wrong, or broken.”

Few of those challenges are evident in the movie, which has a kind of naturalism and energy that puts you in the middle of one of the world’s more colorful and unlikely jam sessions. From its ear-bending beginning, in which musicians sitting in a floor circle suddenly spring into spirited action, the film is about capturing the audience sonically.

The images are simply a kind of low-key complement, meant to be drunk in as the music takes your mind wandering. There is some footage of the 15th century Mehrangarh Fort, where much of the music was recorded (coincidentally, where “The Dark Knight Rises” shot too, though Anderson didn’t know it at the time) and some street scenes of nearby downtown Jaipur. But mostly it’s just people sitting around making music, with very little interviews or even speaking of any kind.

Anderson said he wanted to emulate the you-are-there, backstory-light feel of the 1960 Newport concert doc “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” until he realized, after he was far along, that there was actually a lot of explanation in that movie.

Most notable about the musicians are their easy cross-pollination — not just of Greenwood, Radiohead’s lead guitarist, lending his Britrock sound to the world musicians, but more subtle combinations. Ben Tzur often sings in Hebrew, and the melding of those lyrics with devotional Sufi musical forms and Indian vocalists and instrumentalists is a reminder that global collaboration isn’t as elusive as we think, or, at least, of just how easy that collaboration can be when everyone speaks music. (One song is titled “Allah Elohim,” merging the Arabic and Hebrew words for God.)

The lack of conventional narrative/narration doesn’t mean that filmmakers didn’t experience some twists of their own. “When we first got there they said, ‘This is the garden room,’ and it soon became clear it was for concubines,” Anderson said. “Mysteries kept unraveling.” The power would go out often and unexpectedly. A filming drone crashed at one point.

“Junun” arrives this weekend via the online site Mubi, part of its unusual rollout that continues this more personal, “Inherent Vice”-y phase of Anderson’s career. It also coincides with the release of an eponymous double album, and some U.S. concert plans may be ahead. At the screening Anderson gave a vibe that suggested, basically, “I didn’t know what this would be, but I figured I might as well take a leap.” Audiences might share that ethos.

Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT

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