Nick Broomfield’s The Stones and Brian Jones brims with piercing insights. Its subject is the musical virtuoso and gifted multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the founder and original leader of the Rolling Stones, whose tumultuous personal life led to an early death at the age of 27. Relying heavily on eyewitness accounts from those who knew Jones, Broomfield creates a portrait that presents a tragic tale of a deeply flawed and insecure individual who became a casualty of his own excess. The film’s approach to recounting Jones’s story is deceptively simple. Over reams of archival footage—which include everything from home movies of Jones as a child to parties with the pre-famous Rolling Stones—Broomfield incorporates audio snippets of testimonies from Jones’s friends, lovers, and colleagues. And the results prove to be as haunting as they are fascinating. And via the film’s juxtaposition between footage of Jones performing in front of fawning crowds with the dark personal stories of those who knew him best, Broomfield bitingly undercuts the rock star’s veneer of public adoration.—Slant Magazine