Carlos (2024)

Carlos

Ever since he burst onto the scene at the Fillmore in San Francisco and then made history at Woodstock in 1969, Carlos Santana’s blend of improvisational Latin rock and blues has been seen as something beyond itself.

In Rudy Valdez’s “Carlos,” a moving but blinkered documentary portrait, that magic is conveyed through performance clips from different points in the Mexican guitarist’s five-decade career and reflections on his life away from the stage. An otherworldly atmosphere suffuses Santana’s film: Even a childhood story he tells about birds appearing to understand his father while he played violin at sunset comes with a cosmic twist ending that lands.

Still, some of Santana the person is left out of this mostly speaking-heads account though at age 76, he does share some raw parts: his dad’s infidelity; being sexually abused as a child. If you watched him make anti-trans comments during a July concert and later apologize for them, this documentary won’t help you understand why they came out of his mouth any more than it explains where he stands politically in general (nowhere). The movie presents its subject without questioning him.

Other interviews feel muted. His sisters don’t seem eager to say too much; their body language suggests it. Bandmate-and-later-wife Cindy Blackman Santana is even quieter than she was during her husband’s acceptance speech at the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors. But this film could have used deeper thinkers than familial confidants; an insightful rock critic or music historian would have helped “Carlos” properly convey not only what Carlos Santana means but what he has meant. Still, such control overtones captivate as soulful biography if not transcendence.

Watch Carlos For Free On Gomovies.