Pearl Jam is one of the quintessential nineties bands, the ones that put alternative rock on the pop verbiage map to begin with. The band has weathered the evolution of the music industry well, the skyrocketing success of early innovation, the publishing industry's prostitution and "branding", fighting said establishment, and staying vibrant despite popular music moving on (as it tends to do). Pearl Jam still tours and releases albums, maintains a central core of musicality, and its members bear the wisdom and grace of people that have managed to outlive the industry. It's fitting then that film director Cameron Crowe, who got his start in the mid-80's as a rock journalist, and was very much a part of the Seattle music scene at its inception, would pair with the band to create a documentary that attempts to define a decade through the lens of one pivotal group of people.

Pearl Jam got its start in Seattle in the late 80's, members of various groups in a tightly-knit rock scene that all seemed to be living in the same creative milieu, and on the same creative wavelength. Members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament had been in a popular local band Green River before joining forces with Andy Wood to form Mother Love Bone. When Andy died of an overdose, the remaining members put out an instrumental demo tape in his honor. A shy, reserved surfer working as a security guard got ahold of the tape and began writing some lyrics. The surfer, Eddie Vedder, did something entirely unheard of with his lyrics and vocal stylings and the band immediately picked up on it. After a tribute album as band Temple of the Dog with singer Chris Cornell, the group toured briefly under the name Mookie Blaylock, before eventually adopting Pearl Jam and releasing their first album in 1990, Pearl Jam 10 (10 was basketball player Mookie Blaylock's number).

Crowe captures the band's origins, and then expertly traces the evolution of twenty years of the band's progression, from its early success, and the popular branding of their music as "grunge" and subsequent commercialization. Fellow alternative rock band Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain's death was offset by a particularly poignant bit of footage in the documentary, one of Cobain and Vedder hugging and goofing off beneath the stage at a concert together. Pearl Jam's disenchantment with the movie industry comes to a head at the MTV premier of Singles, where a drunk Vedder insults MTV, the movie production company, and the audience in a performance that is nonetheless well received in the media. (Demeaningly characterized as the "grunge" lifestyle of disaffected youth.)

The most striking aspect of Crowe's documentary, and the band members' own reflections, is how well articulated the arc of a decade is portrayed. Watching Pearl Jam 20 is to be transported back to an era that was pivotal in my own life growing up. We saw the machinery of the music industry grind the life out of new music, and a band that struggled to maintain their core despite it. The juvenile and naive youth movement of the 90's has given way to the socially-aware adults that now contend with war, terrorism, and economic hardship. The documentary captures the birth of that generation's identity through the lens of s single, pivotal band. Crowe's definitely shown his chops as both a film director and music journalist, blending both to create a record of an entire generation.