Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson

The documentary filmmaker, even when trying to remain passive, cannot help but comment on the action. How he captures, chooses and arranges the moments that comprise his film creates a tone, an attitude toward his subjects. Of a nearly infinite number of possibilities, he chooses one.

It can be as simple as Gabe Polsky funneling the majority of his portrait of the Soviet Union’s legendary ice hockey program in “Red Army” through interviews with a single player, or as knotty as Orson Welles inserting himself into his highly self-reflexive “F for Fake”—nominally about a famous art forger, but largely stuffed with Welles’ semi-coherent ramblings—but the documentarian participates, whether he wants to or not.

“Junun,” the first documentary from acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson, comes about as close to passivity as the medium allows.

The 54-minute film follows Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood, who scored Anderson’s previous three features, to India, where he records an album with Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and Indian band the Rajasthan Express.

The film is, technically, a behind-the-scenes music documentary, but it does not act like most behind-the-scenes music documentaries. There is no intra-band strife, no writer’s block, no consideration of the musicians’ personal lives. This is not a film about making music; it is one about music being made.

Films about the former tend to portray music as a catalyst that unleashes egos and unearths long-held resentments. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s 2004 documentary, “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” which chronicles the creation of the band’s 2003 album, “St. Anger,” exemplifies this making-of as melodrama approach. More time is spent watching the band hash out internal conflicts with its therapist than on the music itself.

“Junun” achieves the opposite. Anderson fills most of its short run-time with the collective’s recording sessions, presented without a discernible agenda. Amusing anecdotes sometimes color the action—producer Nigel Godrich shooing a bird from the studio, a musician picking his nose before a take—but the music is the film’s loose binding.

The challenge then becomes how to make the act of creation cinematically compelling. Without the benefit of a clear narrative, Anderson uses subtle variation as his method of choice, shooting the sessions with a variety of camera movements, angles and distances.

In one of the film’s opening scenes, he places the camera in the middle of the musicians—who record while seated on the floor of their makeshift studio and arranged in an inward-facing circle—slowly panning between them. The effect is to visually fragment the process while retaining the sonic whole. Later, he peers through a doorway, creating distance between viewer and subject.

But even Anderson’s fly-on-the-wall aesthetic amounts to a commentary. Aside from the brief, occasional interview, we learn almost nothing about any of the musicians; there are stories here, but Anderson doesn’t go looking for them. Intentionally or not, he argues against using context to justify content. Many music documentaries use the recording process as a supplement to interpersonal chaos; Anderson ignores the latter altogether.

Anderson’s feel for cinematic language carries this otherwise slight project. Music has always played a pivotal role in his films, often shaping the viewer’s relationship to his images in surprising ways, such as the atonal drones that turn the historical epic “There Will Be Blood” into a quasi-horror film, or the deranged whimsy of Jon Brion’s “Punch-Drunk Love” score. Here, frantic polyrhythms and blaring horn sections create the film’s forward momentum.

Anderson sometimes uses this momentum to venture outside of the recording sessions. In the film’s most dynamic sequence, he follows two of the musicians on the streets of Jodhpur. One needs to get his harmonium tuned, another purchases an electronic keyboard. Cut to the rhythms of a pulsing, electronic beat and vocal chanting, the sequence widens the film’s scope without violating its show-don’t-tell philosophy. The film would have benefitted from leaving the studio more frequently.

“Junun” is a curious move for Anderson. A successor to American filmmaking legends like Welles, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola, Anderson merits attention with each of his projects. His latest, while mesmerizing, feels like a footnote to a rich and diverse filmography.

When Anderson speaks, people listen. If only he had more to say here.

“Junun” is available to stream on MUBI.com.