(John Carney, 2016)
I was brought up in 1980s Dublin. I went to a Christian Brothers all-boys Secondary school in a rough area. I loved music; as an escape, as a release.
Sing Street, then, spoke to me in a way few films do. The story of a 15 year old middle class boy transferred from his posh school (the way the Christian Brothers contemptuously refer to "Jesuits" gets across something hilarious and profound about Irish culture in two syllables) to a much rougher one nearby and escapes the brutality and bleakness of life in '80s Dublin through pop music is joyous and funny throughout, but in a very Irish way, it is never blind to the realities of the world it portrays.
That means that Carney shows how Dublin - perhaps the poorest capital city in Europe in the '80s - was subject to deprivation and social issues.
The background to the story is filled with absent parents; alcoholism, heroin addiction, mental health issues. Shot on location around Dublin's working class inner city, Carney sets much of the story in the council estates that ring the city centre. Here they are full of graffiti and litter; crumbling and in undeniable disrepair. But the story seems all set in summer - sunshine fills this film until the last scene, and the day-glo '80s fashions both accentuate this lightness and positivity and are given a strange context by the daylight; velvet suits and goth make-up look beautifully ridiculous in a street in afternoon sunlight.
Our lead is Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), whose parents (Aidan Gillen and Maria Doyle-Kennedy) are enduring a crumbling marriage and reduced economic circumstances. He moves to Synge Street Christian Brothers school, where he is bullied both by students and staff (the film subtly acknowledges the abuse that was still a feature of such schools in that era) and is only saved when he sees Raphina (Lucy Boynton) on the steps of the Girls Home opposite the school. To impress her, he invents a band on the spot and invites her to star in their video. So then he has to recruit band members, write a song and make a demo.
Things snowball from there, as the band (Sing Street) improve and bond, while Conor and Raphina develop a connection. All the while Conor is guided by his stoner dropout of an older brother (Jack Reynor).
Just as in his breakthrough Once, Carney is perhaps most at home with the scenes of musical discovery - the bits here where Conor and his bandmate Eamonn write songs together are full of a sense of excitement and potential - and Conor's love of music runs parallel with his love of Raphina. The romance works even if both leads are slightly miscast. Boynton is suitably beautiful - she is meant to stand out in '80s Dublin, and she does - but her accent wavers all over the place. Walsh-Peelo never has the charisma or complexity of a lead. Indeed, Reynor blows him off screen in their shared scenes. But he does well with the musical scenes and much of the comedy, a lot of which is carried by the supporting characters.
The richly detailed world here is what makes the film work so well. Each character has an inner life, every detail makes sense. The music is lovely, and the cut from Hall & Oates' "Maneater" to the boy's rip-off is a brilliant moment. The ending is feel-good in the best way, and the themes of brotherhood and creativity are nicely developed throughout.
Plus: it is really funny.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 April 2016
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
TUMBLEDOWN
(Sean Mewshaw, 2015)
So say Bon Iver had died after that one
(good) record. Or say Elliott Smith had only made that early acoustic record.
And then died, leaving a small body of work and a wife (Rebecca Hall, good as ever) behind to guard his
legacy. And she’s trying to write a book about him but shes too close and too
involved and still mourning, and she can’t do him justice, alone as she is in
her rural house with the ghosts of their life together and his home-made
recording studio. Then this New York intellectual professor of pop culture (Jason Sudekis) shows up, writing some arty-farty tenure application academic book, and they
hate one another straight away, but she relents and asks him to write the
biography for her. And he agrees, eager for a scoop and needing the money, and
moves in, and of course, of course, slowly, but not too slowly, they fall for
one another.
Only there’s still the ghost of that dead,
seemingly perfect genius singer-songwriter, and he has his theories and her
memories and the oddball eccentrics of her small town life, including her
family and his life in New York, and so so many hurdles before they can be
together.
Oh and it’s a gentle comedy-drama. Most of
the drama coming from his one-liner responses to those small-town
eccentricities and her withering contempt for his big city ways. Most of the
drama from her continued grief for her dead soul mate.
The leads are appealing and believable and
they make a cute couple. It’s nice. Agreeable. You could watch it on a plane.
The songs – by Damien Jurado – are pretty.
Thursday, 30 July 2015
EDEN
(Mia Hansen-Løve, 2014)
Hansen-Løve gets moments and scenes so right that it can't help feel somewhat disappointing that she does not yet seem to know how to turn that talent into creating a satisfying feature.
That's not to say Eden is a failure; rather it is frustrating and a little thin, but there are beautiful stretches and lovely moments scattered throughout.
Based to some extent on the career of her older brother Sven as a DJ from the early '90s to the early 2010s, it follows Paul (Félix De Givry, delivering a performance which is either wooden or a great portrayal of a certain brand of bored, searching youth - it's hard to know which) through life in the dance scene in Paris after he and a schoolfriend set up as "Cheers" and begin playing garage classics at raves. By 2000 they host successful club nights, dj in New York, have a radio show, and their old friends Guy-Man and Harold are internationally famous as Daft Punk. But Paul is still a bit of a mess; broke, with a coke habit, unable to sustain a relationship, unsure of what to do next. With nice understatement, Hansen-Løve titles the second chapter of her two part story, "Lost in Music".
The very first scene perhaps establishes what Paul is searching for all those years: after leaving a party on a submarine, he hallucinates a beautiful animated bird in the dawn sky while sitting alone in the forest. After this we rarely get any view into his thoughts or feelings - we see him spin disks and pump his fist to crowds of dancers, and kiss girls and snort and drink and smoke - but what he thinks is rarely obvious.
Hansen-Løve does this sort of thing very well; this film is full of story but has little plot. It never feels contrived or fake (except perhaps for the difficult friend who you know will end up committing suicide from the very first time you see him, an entirely French cliche), and it does feel like life. That makes her brilliant at capturing how moments feel: what it is like to walk into a party with your friends at the age of 19, the surge of euphoria at a great tune on a dance floor, summer in a city, the morning after, the first flush of love. But over the course of two hours and ten minutes, the film feels a bit like an overlong dance remix - a little repetitive, a little shallow.
That could be changed if Paul were more interesting. We see him find and lose women (including an awkward Greta Gerwig), and in the coda, when he is attending a writers workshop, positively bathed in his own melancholy, he seems finally a character worth the attention the film has paid to him. The moment when sober, he watches a pretty girl DJ play a Daft Punk track from a Macbook at a new subterranean club and deals with his own complex feelings about it is as complex as anything in the film, which is always beautifully shot and obviously filled with terrific music.
None more terrific than that of Daft Punk, who ghost alongside Cheers throughout the story, as the only act to truly transcend Dance music as a genre. The moment when they show up at a party and nervously play their new song, "Da Funk", is probably the best in the film. And they benefit from a solid recurring gag, which is as light as Hansen-Løve gets.
Hansen-Løve gets moments and scenes so right that it can't help feel somewhat disappointing that she does not yet seem to know how to turn that talent into creating a satisfying feature.
That's not to say Eden is a failure; rather it is frustrating and a little thin, but there are beautiful stretches and lovely moments scattered throughout.
Based to some extent on the career of her older brother Sven as a DJ from the early '90s to the early 2010s, it follows Paul (Félix De Givry, delivering a performance which is either wooden or a great portrayal of a certain brand of bored, searching youth - it's hard to know which) through life in the dance scene in Paris after he and a schoolfriend set up as "Cheers" and begin playing garage classics at raves. By 2000 they host successful club nights, dj in New York, have a radio show, and their old friends Guy-Man and Harold are internationally famous as Daft Punk. But Paul is still a bit of a mess; broke, with a coke habit, unable to sustain a relationship, unsure of what to do next. With nice understatement, Hansen-Løve titles the second chapter of her two part story, "Lost in Music".
The very first scene perhaps establishes what Paul is searching for all those years: after leaving a party on a submarine, he hallucinates a beautiful animated bird in the dawn sky while sitting alone in the forest. After this we rarely get any view into his thoughts or feelings - we see him spin disks and pump his fist to crowds of dancers, and kiss girls and snort and drink and smoke - but what he thinks is rarely obvious.
Hansen-Løve does this sort of thing very well; this film is full of story but has little plot. It never feels contrived or fake (except perhaps for the difficult friend who you know will end up committing suicide from the very first time you see him, an entirely French cliche), and it does feel like life. That makes her brilliant at capturing how moments feel: what it is like to walk into a party with your friends at the age of 19, the surge of euphoria at a great tune on a dance floor, summer in a city, the morning after, the first flush of love. But over the course of two hours and ten minutes, the film feels a bit like an overlong dance remix - a little repetitive, a little shallow.
That could be changed if Paul were more interesting. We see him find and lose women (including an awkward Greta Gerwig), and in the coda, when he is attending a writers workshop, positively bathed in his own melancholy, he seems finally a character worth the attention the film has paid to him. The moment when sober, he watches a pretty girl DJ play a Daft Punk track from a Macbook at a new subterranean club and deals with his own complex feelings about it is as complex as anything in the film, which is always beautifully shot and obviously filled with terrific music.
None more terrific than that of Daft Punk, who ghost alongside Cheers throughout the story, as the only act to truly transcend Dance music as a genre. The moment when they show up at a party and nervously play their new song, "Da Funk", is probably the best in the film. And they benefit from a solid recurring gag, which is as light as Hansen-Løve gets.
Thursday, 16 July 2015
LOVE & MERCY
(Bill Pohlad, 2014)
The urge to explain a person is the downfall of so many biopics, and Love & Mercy cannot avoid this flaw. People are complex and contradictory, and not everything can be explained by a few flashbacks. But some cinema has decided that they can, they must, they will, and so at the start of the third act here, we have a "brave" scene where we see Brian Wilson (John Cusack) in bed, and then Pohlad tries to take us on a tour of his brain. There are jump cuts, loads of trick editing, as we see a mix of memories, ideas, music, and fantasies all colliding. This is pop-psychology at its most basic and reductive, which attempts to explore what is "wrong" with Wilson and instead serves to caricature and over-simplify him.
Thankfully, much of the rest of the film is more sensitive and interesting. It tells parallel stories of Wilson at the peak of his powers in 1965-67, when he created Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, after a panic attack on an airplane led him to quite touring with the Beach Boys. He is played in these scenes by Paul Dano, who is terrific, emphasising his childlike qualities and his melancholy with equal commitment and skill. These passages have the added bonus of using the sweet sweet music Wilson created in the '60s as their soundtrack, and probably the most enjoyable scenes in the film are those depicting him "playing the studio", directing session musicians to create his pop symphonies. As the film progresses these scenes darken as Wilson's mental problems begin, exacerbated by his drug use.
There are a few nice through-lines here: Wilson's attachment to abusive, controlling male figures is shown through his relationships with his father Murray, cousin and bandmate Mike Love, and finally with the Psychiatrist who became a sort of svengali for him, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).
But the heart of the story is his new relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) in the 1980s. She discovers just how monstrous Landy is and sets about releasing Wilson from his control, falling in love with this vulnerable man child and conflicted by how difficult his circumstances are.
Cusack and Banks have chemistry, and she is underrated as a dramatic actress, beautiful in a sunny, real way, her warmth and intelligence are always evident onscreen, and it is understandable that Wilson would be so instantly smitten. Cusack plays this older, damaged Wilson as a frightened, desperate shell, and allows a spark of life back into his eyes with the discovery of this woman.
Pohlad's direction is pedestrian, the script a little by-numbers, but the actors and that music carry it.
The urge to explain a person is the downfall of so many biopics, and Love & Mercy cannot avoid this flaw. People are complex and contradictory, and not everything can be explained by a few flashbacks. But some cinema has decided that they can, they must, they will, and so at the start of the third act here, we have a "brave" scene where we see Brian Wilson (John Cusack) in bed, and then Pohlad tries to take us on a tour of his brain. There are jump cuts, loads of trick editing, as we see a mix of memories, ideas, music, and fantasies all colliding. This is pop-psychology at its most basic and reductive, which attempts to explore what is "wrong" with Wilson and instead serves to caricature and over-simplify him.
Thankfully, much of the rest of the film is more sensitive and interesting. It tells parallel stories of Wilson at the peak of his powers in 1965-67, when he created Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, after a panic attack on an airplane led him to quite touring with the Beach Boys. He is played in these scenes by Paul Dano, who is terrific, emphasising his childlike qualities and his melancholy with equal commitment and skill. These passages have the added bonus of using the sweet sweet music Wilson created in the '60s as their soundtrack, and probably the most enjoyable scenes in the film are those depicting him "playing the studio", directing session musicians to create his pop symphonies. As the film progresses these scenes darken as Wilson's mental problems begin, exacerbated by his drug use.
There are a few nice through-lines here: Wilson's attachment to abusive, controlling male figures is shown through his relationships with his father Murray, cousin and bandmate Mike Love, and finally with the Psychiatrist who became a sort of svengali for him, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).
But the heart of the story is his new relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) in the 1980s. She discovers just how monstrous Landy is and sets about releasing Wilson from his control, falling in love with this vulnerable man child and conflicted by how difficult his circumstances are.
Cusack and Banks have chemistry, and she is underrated as a dramatic actress, beautiful in a sunny, real way, her warmth and intelligence are always evident onscreen, and it is understandable that Wilson would be so instantly smitten. Cusack plays this older, damaged Wilson as a frightened, desperate shell, and allows a spark of life back into his eyes with the discovery of this woman.
Pohlad's direction is pedestrian, the script a little by-numbers, but the actors and that music carry it.
Thursday, 19 February 2015
BEYOND THE LIGHTS
(Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2014)
It took me a while to figure out exactly what it is about Beyond the Lights that feels so blessedly, brilliantly old-fashioned. It's not that it tells an old, classic love story wherein rising pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), isolated by the spotlight and struggling to express who she really is from behind the image created mainly by her driven, domineering mother (Minnie Driver) one night attempts suicide and is saved by LA cop Kaz (Nate Parker). He saves her by intensely telling her he "sees" her and a bond is formed that haltingly, touchingly, turns into romance. Yes, that comes straight out of The Bodyguard, as do a few of the scenes of backstage bitching and power struggles. The world portrayed her is scrupulously modern, too, with the importance of twitter and youtube hits made plot-points. But what is really old-fashioned is the sincerity of it all.
There is little new here, but it is all done with such emotional intensity that it feels fresh; these days romance is too frequently fodder for rom-coms and Nicholas Sparks weepies, but here it is the subject of the movie. This love story is about how love changes the people involved. Kaz, like Noni, is in the shadow of an ambitious parent (Danny Glover). In his case, his political ambitions have been stirred by the exposure the incident with Noni creates, but when the two lovers find one another, they also find themselves, even if the plot demands a few reversals and obstacles must be overcome.
The cast are excellent, which is a big part of why this never feels remotely like a tv movie. Mbatha-Raw is convincing both as the sexy R&B babe of her public image and the sensitive Brixton girl smothered beneath, while Parker brings a shy integrity to his man of few words. Minnie Driver is frightening as Noni's mother, and Prince-Blythewood directs them all with a great eye for the nuances and subtleties of body language and eye contact, as well as a good feeling for texture and mood.
Her script makes a virtue of its cliches: when Noni and Kaz escape the spotlight for a beachside idyll, it is affecting to watch them really get to know each other and fall in love. Kaz's reaction to an insult from Noni's rapper ex-boyfriend is funny and believable, for all that it is purest soap opera. And finally, the last act and it's revelatory voyage of self-discovery (for both characters) is moving and never less than entertaining.
It also says interesting things about our relationship with celebrity and the way we fabricate fame and drama, without ever becoming didactic.
It took me a while to figure out exactly what it is about Beyond the Lights that feels so blessedly, brilliantly old-fashioned. It's not that it tells an old, classic love story wherein rising pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), isolated by the spotlight and struggling to express who she really is from behind the image created mainly by her driven, domineering mother (Minnie Driver) one night attempts suicide and is saved by LA cop Kaz (Nate Parker). He saves her by intensely telling her he "sees" her and a bond is formed that haltingly, touchingly, turns into romance. Yes, that comes straight out of The Bodyguard, as do a few of the scenes of backstage bitching and power struggles. The world portrayed her is scrupulously modern, too, with the importance of twitter and youtube hits made plot-points. But what is really old-fashioned is the sincerity of it all.
There is little new here, but it is all done with such emotional intensity that it feels fresh; these days romance is too frequently fodder for rom-coms and Nicholas Sparks weepies, but here it is the subject of the movie. This love story is about how love changes the people involved. Kaz, like Noni, is in the shadow of an ambitious parent (Danny Glover). In his case, his political ambitions have been stirred by the exposure the incident with Noni creates, but when the two lovers find one another, they also find themselves, even if the plot demands a few reversals and obstacles must be overcome.
The cast are excellent, which is a big part of why this never feels remotely like a tv movie. Mbatha-Raw is convincing both as the sexy R&B babe of her public image and the sensitive Brixton girl smothered beneath, while Parker brings a shy integrity to his man of few words. Minnie Driver is frightening as Noni's mother, and Prince-Blythewood directs them all with a great eye for the nuances and subtleties of body language and eye contact, as well as a good feeling for texture and mood.
Her script makes a virtue of its cliches: when Noni and Kaz escape the spotlight for a beachside idyll, it is affecting to watch them really get to know each other and fall in love. Kaz's reaction to an insult from Noni's rapper ex-boyfriend is funny and believable, for all that it is purest soap opera. And finally, the last act and it's revelatory voyage of self-discovery (for both characters) is moving and never less than entertaining.
It also says interesting things about our relationship with celebrity and the way we fabricate fame and drama, without ever becoming didactic.
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
GOD HELP THE GIRL
(Stuart Murdoch, 2014)
Personal passion projects are always something of a worry. By their very nature they suggest self-indulgence, and that is certainly the case for God Help the Girl, written and directed by Belle & Sebastian singer-songwriter Murdoch and inspired by his recent girl-singer-focused side-project.
That is not to say it is bad; it certainly is not. In fact, it has several winning elements and a great deal of breezy charm, but it is also occasionally amateurish and overwhelmingly twee.
It fuses two hugely different narrative strands and moods into one often-awkward confection. In the first, Eve (Emily Browning, carrying the film) struggles with depression and an eating disorder and tentatively mounts a recovery through music. In the second, Eve and her new friends Cassie and James (Olly Alexander) spend a quirky summer lolling around the leafy Victorian suburbs of Glasgow, talking about music, playing it the odd time and generally doing not very much.
Thats it. The songs are generally good, the routines worked out for them sometimes less than that, and much of it feels like it was made by an undergraduate high on the Nouvelle Vague and Jacques Demy. But: it is earnest in an old-fashioned, determinedly unfashionable (despite all the hipster window dressing) manner, and that gives it a quiet integrity and soul which makes it likeable. Murdoch stages some scenes with wit and style.
The actors are winning, which makes a few of their more adolescent conversations just about bearable, while others are touching in the naked vulnerability on display. And everything looks great, from Glasgow to the costumes to the cinematography; vibrant and energetic and pretty all the way through.
Personal passion projects are always something of a worry. By their very nature they suggest self-indulgence, and that is certainly the case for God Help the Girl, written and directed by Belle & Sebastian singer-songwriter Murdoch and inspired by his recent girl-singer-focused side-project.
That is not to say it is bad; it certainly is not. In fact, it has several winning elements and a great deal of breezy charm, but it is also occasionally amateurish and overwhelmingly twee.
It fuses two hugely different narrative strands and moods into one often-awkward confection. In the first, Eve (Emily Browning, carrying the film) struggles with depression and an eating disorder and tentatively mounts a recovery through music. In the second, Eve and her new friends Cassie and James (Olly Alexander) spend a quirky summer lolling around the leafy Victorian suburbs of Glasgow, talking about music, playing it the odd time and generally doing not very much.
Thats it. The songs are generally good, the routines worked out for them sometimes less than that, and much of it feels like it was made by an undergraduate high on the Nouvelle Vague and Jacques Demy. But: it is earnest in an old-fashioned, determinedly unfashionable (despite all the hipster window dressing) manner, and that gives it a quiet integrity and soul which makes it likeable. Murdoch stages some scenes with wit and style.
The actors are winning, which makes a few of their more adolescent conversations just about bearable, while others are touching in the naked vulnerability on display. And everything looks great, from Glasgow to the costumes to the cinematography; vibrant and energetic and pretty all the way through.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
WHIPLASH
(Damien Chazelle, 2014)
A drama that plays like a gut-wrenching thriller, Whiplash is impressive in enough ways that its flaws cease to matter early on.
It tells the story of Andrew Neman (Miles Teller), a 19 year old music student at the prestigious Schaffer Institute in New York who wants to be the world's greatest jazz drummer. To that end, he craves the attention and approval of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the leader of the Institute's house band and a fearsome taskmaster and moulder of talent. Fletcher notices him, drafts him into said band, and begins a campaign of attrition seemingly designed to break the young man, insulting and threatening him, humiliating him in front of peers and rivals, making him play until he literally bleeds onto his drums. Meanwhile Andrew alienates his sweet new girlfriend when he tells her she will only distract him from his quest to be "great", insults his fathers friends when they patronise his calling, and generally finds his life shrinking down to himself, Fletcher and his drum-kit. And then things get worse.
This is in every way a debut; it feels tightly controlled and planned in every particular the way debut films are, by hungry young filmmakers eager to make sure their first shot is the one. The screenplay is tight and a little too rote in parts; the scene where Andrew returns home seems as if it has been inserted just to show us what he is actually like, since up to this point we have mainly watched him react to things and people and heard relatively little from him about what he thinks or feels. It feels a little like the result of some feedback from a screenwriting seminar. Later on the story reaches a few silly heights, but it has you in it's grip then, and will not let go, for all the silly coincidences and unbelievable actions may strain your belief.
That should not diminish Chazelle's achievement; Whiplash is powerful, pitiless stuff. He shoots it mainly in tight, gorgeous close-ups and his colour palette is phenomenal and seems somehow to echo this romantic, lush music - deep crimsons, rich golden hues, chestnut backgrounds surround the faces, pooled in light. Cutaways and inserts give a real sense of the texture of life in a big band. The script is full of great lines, the majority given to Simmons, who tears away at Fletcher like his career depended on it. He is ferocious, witty, passionate, and he finally meets a match in Teller's blank-eyed slave to ambition and Buddy Rich. These duelling sociopaths would destroy everything in their path, but their own clash makes for terrific drama, and much of the credit has to go to the two actors, who are wonderful.
Chazelle orchestrates the tension beautifully - a few scenes are almost unwatchably intense, based on nothing more than human drama - and he knows when to let the music play too; Whiplash is filled with great tunes.
A drama that plays like a gut-wrenching thriller, Whiplash is impressive in enough ways that its flaws cease to matter early on.
It tells the story of Andrew Neman (Miles Teller), a 19 year old music student at the prestigious Schaffer Institute in New York who wants to be the world's greatest jazz drummer. To that end, he craves the attention and approval of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the leader of the Institute's house band and a fearsome taskmaster and moulder of talent. Fletcher notices him, drafts him into said band, and begins a campaign of attrition seemingly designed to break the young man, insulting and threatening him, humiliating him in front of peers and rivals, making him play until he literally bleeds onto his drums. Meanwhile Andrew alienates his sweet new girlfriend when he tells her she will only distract him from his quest to be "great", insults his fathers friends when they patronise his calling, and generally finds his life shrinking down to himself, Fletcher and his drum-kit. And then things get worse.
This is in every way a debut; it feels tightly controlled and planned in every particular the way debut films are, by hungry young filmmakers eager to make sure their first shot is the one. The screenplay is tight and a little too rote in parts; the scene where Andrew returns home seems as if it has been inserted just to show us what he is actually like, since up to this point we have mainly watched him react to things and people and heard relatively little from him about what he thinks or feels. It feels a little like the result of some feedback from a screenwriting seminar. Later on the story reaches a few silly heights, but it has you in it's grip then, and will not let go, for all the silly coincidences and unbelievable actions may strain your belief.
That should not diminish Chazelle's achievement; Whiplash is powerful, pitiless stuff. He shoots it mainly in tight, gorgeous close-ups and his colour palette is phenomenal and seems somehow to echo this romantic, lush music - deep crimsons, rich golden hues, chestnut backgrounds surround the faces, pooled in light. Cutaways and inserts give a real sense of the texture of life in a big band. The script is full of great lines, the majority given to Simmons, who tears away at Fletcher like his career depended on it. He is ferocious, witty, passionate, and he finally meets a match in Teller's blank-eyed slave to ambition and Buddy Rich. These duelling sociopaths would destroy everything in their path, but their own clash makes for terrific drama, and much of the credit has to go to the two actors, who are wonderful.
Chazelle orchestrates the tension beautifully - a few scenes are almost unwatchably intense, based on nothing more than human drama - and he knows when to let the music play too; Whiplash is filled with great tunes.
Friday, 5 December 2014
BEGIN AGAIN
(John Carney, 2013)
Carney returns - sort of - to the winning formula he chanced upon in the modern classic that is Once, creating another not-quite-romance of two lost characters who find and save one another through the healing power of music.
Ruffalo is a down-on-his-luck A&R man and producer who, on the day when he has been fired from the label he co-founded, drunkenly chances upon singer-songwriter Knightly in a Greenwich village bar, falls in love with her song and suggests she sign with him. She is there after being dumped by her long-term boyfriend (Adam Levine) who has been propelled to sudden rock stardom by the inclusion of a song in a hit movie, leaving her behind as he changes and sells out. Rejected by his old label, Ruffalo suggests they make an album live in a variety of famous Manhattan locations, allowing Carney to shoot the city in all its summertime glory, while Knightly and band run through a series of catchy Gregg Alexander tunes on rooftops, subway platforms and in central Park..
Along the way, of course, there is growth, and healing, and a few good gags (James Corden responsible for many of them). It is poppy and light, and yet Carney insures that there is some consideration of the issues central to art; self-expression, authenticity, the impact of success. Knightly remains true to her music throughout and ultimately rejects the chance of romantic rapprochement after realising that her ex feels differently about the importance of songs, and a coda suggests that her way will ultimately prove successful too. Meanwhile Ruffalo is redeemed by finding new music to love (the original title of the film was the fitting Can a Song Save Your Life?) which unites him with his estranged wife and daughter.
It is nicely shot to make a pin-sharp New York look fantastic, the cast are perhaps a bit classier than it deserves, and it is strangely resonant in its low-key tackling of some of the ideas and issues central to most everyday lives. Most importantly, it understands music, how we feel and feel about and experience music, how important it is, how musicians live surrounded by it.
Carney returns - sort of - to the winning formula he chanced upon in the modern classic that is Once, creating another not-quite-romance of two lost characters who find and save one another through the healing power of music.
Ruffalo is a down-on-his-luck A&R man and producer who, on the day when he has been fired from the label he co-founded, drunkenly chances upon singer-songwriter Knightly in a Greenwich village bar, falls in love with her song and suggests she sign with him. She is there after being dumped by her long-term boyfriend (Adam Levine) who has been propelled to sudden rock stardom by the inclusion of a song in a hit movie, leaving her behind as he changes and sells out. Rejected by his old label, Ruffalo suggests they make an album live in a variety of famous Manhattan locations, allowing Carney to shoot the city in all its summertime glory, while Knightly and band run through a series of catchy Gregg Alexander tunes on rooftops, subway platforms and in central Park..
Along the way, of course, there is growth, and healing, and a few good gags (James Corden responsible for many of them). It is poppy and light, and yet Carney insures that there is some consideration of the issues central to art; self-expression, authenticity, the impact of success. Knightly remains true to her music throughout and ultimately rejects the chance of romantic rapprochement after realising that her ex feels differently about the importance of songs, and a coda suggests that her way will ultimately prove successful too. Meanwhile Ruffalo is redeemed by finding new music to love (the original title of the film was the fitting Can a Song Save Your Life?) which unites him with his estranged wife and daughter.
It is nicely shot to make a pin-sharp New York look fantastic, the cast are perhaps a bit classier than it deserves, and it is strangely resonant in its low-key tackling of some of the ideas and issues central to most everyday lives. Most importantly, it understands music, how we feel and feel about and experience music, how important it is, how musicians live surrounded by it.
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
FRANK
(Leonard Abrahamson, 2014)
Frank does many difficult things extremely well.
It is a black comedy which is, at it's core, about mental illness. Not only that; it addresses lots of the unpalatable truths of human interaction - insecurity, ambition, weakness, jealousy. And it is funny despite that.
It creates an interesting portrayal of musicians at work which lacks most of the usual cliches applied to musicians in cinema. And the music is pretty good, too.
One of it's central characters spends 95% of the story wearing a papier mache head. And this only makes him more hypnotic.
It follows Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a frustrated young office drone from a seaside British town with dreams of rock stardom from the time he encounters Soronpfrbs, an American band on a shambolic tour in a battered old van. Their singer and leader is Frank (Michael Fassbender), who constantly wears that head. He eats in it, sleeps in it, showers in it (wrapped inside a plastic bag). He also seems to be a sort of genius; improvising songs at will, inspired by everything, dragging the rest of the band along in his wake.
After their keyboard player attempts suicide, Jon fills in on keyboards for a gig in his hometown, then gets a phonecall offering him the role on a long-term basis. He travels to rural Ireland, where they set to work on an album, the recording of which takes months. During this time, the web of co-dependencies and rivalries in the band, mostly revolving around Clara (Maggie Gylenhall) grows more complex, as Jon pushes for a more commercial, "likeable" direction, surreptitiously filming their sessions and posting the results on YouTube, where they develop a cult following (this film makes excellent use of twitter as a comedic device). That following results in the offer of a gig at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. But Frank starts to feel the pressure of performing before a large audience as the band starts to crumble around him, and Jon struggles to hold everything together.
Abrahamson has a gift for observation and for texture; and Frank is full of funny, precisely nuanced scenes in vivid locations, each of them ably captured. The characters seem like they are types, exaggerated for comedic effect...until the pathos starts to seep into this story, and the melancholy heart of Frank himself and of Dan (Scoot McNairy) becomes evident. This is contrasted with Jon's desperate desire to be a star despite a shortfall of talent, and Clara's manic need for control.
Occasionally we even see them play music, a sort of droning eclectic mix of post-rock and electronic experimentation that actually is interesting and good.
Fassbender is as magnetic as ever, using beautifully concise movement and body language to let that blankly surprised giant head act for him. It works. It's hard to drag your eyes away from him whenever he is onscreen.
Gleeson gives great support as the wide-eyed, painfully human Jon, while Gyllenhall is deadpan deliciousness as Clara, casually devastating with her brutal one-line dismissals. The script is full of sly wit, but it is tender to its characters too. All of this, and it still manages to say moving, near-profound things about creativity, inspiration and selfishness. It is magnificent, and quite, quite unique.
Frank does many difficult things extremely well.
It is a black comedy which is, at it's core, about mental illness. Not only that; it addresses lots of the unpalatable truths of human interaction - insecurity, ambition, weakness, jealousy. And it is funny despite that.
It creates an interesting portrayal of musicians at work which lacks most of the usual cliches applied to musicians in cinema. And the music is pretty good, too.
One of it's central characters spends 95% of the story wearing a papier mache head. And this only makes him more hypnotic.
It follows Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a frustrated young office drone from a seaside British town with dreams of rock stardom from the time he encounters Soronpfrbs, an American band on a shambolic tour in a battered old van. Their singer and leader is Frank (Michael Fassbender), who constantly wears that head. He eats in it, sleeps in it, showers in it (wrapped inside a plastic bag). He also seems to be a sort of genius; improvising songs at will, inspired by everything, dragging the rest of the band along in his wake.
After their keyboard player attempts suicide, Jon fills in on keyboards for a gig in his hometown, then gets a phonecall offering him the role on a long-term basis. He travels to rural Ireland, where they set to work on an album, the recording of which takes months. During this time, the web of co-dependencies and rivalries in the band, mostly revolving around Clara (Maggie Gylenhall) grows more complex, as Jon pushes for a more commercial, "likeable" direction, surreptitiously filming their sessions and posting the results on YouTube, where they develop a cult following (this film makes excellent use of twitter as a comedic device). That following results in the offer of a gig at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. But Frank starts to feel the pressure of performing before a large audience as the band starts to crumble around him, and Jon struggles to hold everything together.
Abrahamson has a gift for observation and for texture; and Frank is full of funny, precisely nuanced scenes in vivid locations, each of them ably captured. The characters seem like they are types, exaggerated for comedic effect...until the pathos starts to seep into this story, and the melancholy heart of Frank himself and of Dan (Scoot McNairy) becomes evident. This is contrasted with Jon's desperate desire to be a star despite a shortfall of talent, and Clara's manic need for control.
Occasionally we even see them play music, a sort of droning eclectic mix of post-rock and electronic experimentation that actually is interesting and good.
Fassbender is as magnetic as ever, using beautifully concise movement and body language to let that blankly surprised giant head act for him. It works. It's hard to drag your eyes away from him whenever he is onscreen.
Gleeson gives great support as the wide-eyed, painfully human Jon, while Gyllenhall is deadpan deliciousness as Clara, casually devastating with her brutal one-line dismissals. The script is full of sly wit, but it is tender to its characters too. All of this, and it still manages to say moving, near-profound things about creativity, inspiration and selfishness. It is magnificent, and quite, quite unique.
Saturday, 1 February 2014
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
(Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013)
Great filmmakers - great artists, in fact, be they novelists, playwrights, comedians, poets - have the ability to capture how it feels to be alive. The Coen Brothers absolutely possess this ability. It gets forgotten, almost, lost in the rush to praise their brilliant screenplays, beautiful visual sense and their storytelling talent. What the mainstream brands as "quirky" is their incredible ability to combine comedy and drama so that certain scenes and passages in their best work play out. Half the audience will be laughing at the deadpan wit, the beautifully observed characters, the other half sit in silence, appreciating the human drama on display. Sometimes of course, they lean more in one direction than the other. There are the outright comedies, like Raising Arizona or Intolerable Cruelty. And the dramas: No Country for Old Men or Millers Crossing, say. But it is never simple. Anton Chigurgh in No Country for Old Men is as funny as any creation in the Coens' filmography for all that he is a terrifying character in a mostly serious film. There is pathos in Raising Arizona, despite its Tex Avery comic invention.
What never changes are those moments of truth: what it is to be alive, captured in an instant, an image, a beat. Songwriters and singers do that too, which is one of the subjects of Inside Llewyn Davis. A character study of the titular figure, a struggling folk-singer in '60s Greenwich Village, played with world-weary cynicism and muted sadness by Oscar Isaac, it is a classic Coens mix of comedy and drama. Llewyn is on the downslope of a career that never really went anywhere, and he only truly realises that during the course of the story, appalled as he is by what passes for folk music around him.
His life is a ruin. He sleeps on the couches of friends, many of whom he doesn't even seem to like or respect, has no money to buy himself a coat despite the fact that it's winter, and doesn't plan for the future. His sister's suggestion that he give up music and return to life as a merchant seaman is met with the words "Just exist?"
His closest friends are Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean (Carey Mulligan), a folk duo. Jean is pregnant, possibly by Llewyn, and her every word in his direction positively drips venom. It becomes apparent that he uses people, and though he is never warm or nice, his essential humanity, the loneliness of his situation and his effortless capacity for self-destruction, does make him sympathetic.
A long, surreal road trip to Canada alongside a loquacious hipster (John Goodman) and his laconic driver (Garrett Hedlund) is Llewyn's breaking point, and perhaps features the film's most beautiful and haunting sequences, as Bruno Delbonnel's exquisitely soft and dank cinematography captures several breathtaking scenes of nocturnal driving; snow drifting across highways, cities glimpsed off in the night.
The music is great, the cast perfect, the clockwork collapse of Llewyn's hopes and dreams hilarious and gruelling in equal measure.
Great filmmakers - great artists, in fact, be they novelists, playwrights, comedians, poets - have the ability to capture how it feels to be alive. The Coen Brothers absolutely possess this ability. It gets forgotten, almost, lost in the rush to praise their brilliant screenplays, beautiful visual sense and their storytelling talent. What the mainstream brands as "quirky" is their incredible ability to combine comedy and drama so that certain scenes and passages in their best work play out. Half the audience will be laughing at the deadpan wit, the beautifully observed characters, the other half sit in silence, appreciating the human drama on display. Sometimes of course, they lean more in one direction than the other. There are the outright comedies, like Raising Arizona or Intolerable Cruelty. And the dramas: No Country for Old Men or Millers Crossing, say. But it is never simple. Anton Chigurgh in No Country for Old Men is as funny as any creation in the Coens' filmography for all that he is a terrifying character in a mostly serious film. There is pathos in Raising Arizona, despite its Tex Avery comic invention.
What never changes are those moments of truth: what it is to be alive, captured in an instant, an image, a beat. Songwriters and singers do that too, which is one of the subjects of Inside Llewyn Davis. A character study of the titular figure, a struggling folk-singer in '60s Greenwich Village, played with world-weary cynicism and muted sadness by Oscar Isaac, it is a classic Coens mix of comedy and drama. Llewyn is on the downslope of a career that never really went anywhere, and he only truly realises that during the course of the story, appalled as he is by what passes for folk music around him.
His life is a ruin. He sleeps on the couches of friends, many of whom he doesn't even seem to like or respect, has no money to buy himself a coat despite the fact that it's winter, and doesn't plan for the future. His sister's suggestion that he give up music and return to life as a merchant seaman is met with the words "Just exist?"
His closest friends are Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean (Carey Mulligan), a folk duo. Jean is pregnant, possibly by Llewyn, and her every word in his direction positively drips venom. It becomes apparent that he uses people, and though he is never warm or nice, his essential humanity, the loneliness of his situation and his effortless capacity for self-destruction, does make him sympathetic.
A long, surreal road trip to Canada alongside a loquacious hipster (John Goodman) and his laconic driver (Garrett Hedlund) is Llewyn's breaking point, and perhaps features the film's most beautiful and haunting sequences, as Bruno Delbonnel's exquisitely soft and dank cinematography captures several breathtaking scenes of nocturnal driving; snow drifting across highways, cities glimpsed off in the night.
The music is great, the cast perfect, the clockwork collapse of Llewyn's hopes and dreams hilarious and gruelling in equal measure.
Sunday, 17 November 2013
BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME
(Drew DiNicola & Olivia Mori, 2012)
Big Star are the cult American band, virtually unknown while they existed (though each of their records was glowingly reviewed) but developing a devout following of obsessives throughout the 80s and 90s until their status changed, and they now seem one of the most influential bands of the last few decades of rock music. That in itself wouldn't make for much of a film, but the fact that they were a fascinating mixture of personalities, and emerged from Memphis, a complex and interesting city in its own right, and one absolutely essential to the history of American popular music, makes their story a lot more enthralling. Then there is the music: DiNicola and Mori are wise enough to know that every ten minutes or so they need to stow the talking heads and just let the music tell the story - then Big Star do the rest, and they do it superbly.
Formed by Memphis rich kid Chris Bell and ex-Box Tops wunderkind Alex Chilton in the early '70s, Big Star emerged seemingly fully formed with the sublime Number One Record. The music on that album is almost perfect - exciting, muscular and precise, its melancholy heart jostling with an exhilarating appreciation for the possibilities inherent in the dynamics of rock music. It didn't sell. Bell, depressed by the way most of the credit went to Chilton, left the band, and Chilton drove them on to the even better second album, Radio City, before a shrinking line-up staggered through excess and self-indulgence to record their dark and fractured Third/Sister Lovers. After that Chilton squandered his talent in a series of jokey provocations, Bell tried in vain to get a deal and ended up working in a restaurant, and the legend of Big Star grew.
This film details the lifespan of the band, features lengthy interviews with bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, makes excellent use of some fine archive photos, and devotes a long time to the lives of the principals after Big Star ended. The recent reunion tours are depicted as a nice little reward to Chilton and Stephens, years after the fact, and a line of rock critics queue up to explain quite why they never had the success they deserved even as the film does a solid job of explaining the promotional and distribution issues responsible.
The early death of Bell - in a car accident at 27 - and Chilton's death in 2010 make this a story with two ghostly absences at its centre, though a couple of wry Chilton radio interviews feature, and producers, engineers, relatives and friends fill out many of the crucial details of the story. It is a sad story, really, one of potential left unfulfilled and thwarted ambition, but it is also full of humour and fascinating people.
It is never depressing, chiefly because the music is so good. For all that some time is devoted to Bell's issues with Christianity and his sexuality, every time a Big Star song plays loud, everything feels just fine. Such is the power of great art.
Big Star are the cult American band, virtually unknown while they existed (though each of their records was glowingly reviewed) but developing a devout following of obsessives throughout the 80s and 90s until their status changed, and they now seem one of the most influential bands of the last few decades of rock music. That in itself wouldn't make for much of a film, but the fact that they were a fascinating mixture of personalities, and emerged from Memphis, a complex and interesting city in its own right, and one absolutely essential to the history of American popular music, makes their story a lot more enthralling. Then there is the music: DiNicola and Mori are wise enough to know that every ten minutes or so they need to stow the talking heads and just let the music tell the story - then Big Star do the rest, and they do it superbly.
Formed by Memphis rich kid Chris Bell and ex-Box Tops wunderkind Alex Chilton in the early '70s, Big Star emerged seemingly fully formed with the sublime Number One Record. The music on that album is almost perfect - exciting, muscular and precise, its melancholy heart jostling with an exhilarating appreciation for the possibilities inherent in the dynamics of rock music. It didn't sell. Bell, depressed by the way most of the credit went to Chilton, left the band, and Chilton drove them on to the even better second album, Radio City, before a shrinking line-up staggered through excess and self-indulgence to record their dark and fractured Third/Sister Lovers. After that Chilton squandered his talent in a series of jokey provocations, Bell tried in vain to get a deal and ended up working in a restaurant, and the legend of Big Star grew.
This film details the lifespan of the band, features lengthy interviews with bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, makes excellent use of some fine archive photos, and devotes a long time to the lives of the principals after Big Star ended. The recent reunion tours are depicted as a nice little reward to Chilton and Stephens, years after the fact, and a line of rock critics queue up to explain quite why they never had the success they deserved even as the film does a solid job of explaining the promotional and distribution issues responsible.
The early death of Bell - in a car accident at 27 - and Chilton's death in 2010 make this a story with two ghostly absences at its centre, though a couple of wry Chilton radio interviews feature, and producers, engineers, relatives and friends fill out many of the crucial details of the story. It is a sad story, really, one of potential left unfulfilled and thwarted ambition, but it is also full of humour and fascinating people.
It is never depressing, chiefly because the music is so good. For all that some time is devoted to Bell's issues with Christianity and his sexuality, every time a Big Star song plays loud, everything feels just fine. Such is the power of great art.
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
GREETINGS FROM TIM BUCKLEY
(Daniel Algrant, 2012)
From a distance, a dual biopic of Tim and Jeff Buckley seemed like a thoroughly bad idea.
Two beautiful singer-songwriters with magnificent voices, both dead tragically young: it appeared a recipe for biopic cliche disaster. Which makes Greetings From Tim Buckley a very pleasant surprise indeed.
It focuses on a few crucial days in the life of Jeff Buckley (Penn Badgely) in 1991, when he travelled to New York from California to appear at a Memorial concert for his father Tim (Ben Rosenfield). At the same time the story flashes back periodically to the period in Tim's life around the birth of his son, while he gigged on the road, slept with women in motels and generally lived like any musician in the 1960s probably would.
Narrowing the focus this way pays off - Jeff is portrayed as a damaged, needy, spontaneous young man, riddled with issues about his father and still discovering how best to use his talent. Over the few days in New York, he and Allie (Imogen Poots) begin a tentative relationship, and we largely see him through her curious, quietly baffled eyes. Badgely does well to show just how selfish and annoying Jeff could be without ever seeming unsympathetic, and he excels in the music scenes - a sequence where he performs a medley of Led Zepellin 3 acapella in a record shop is probably the best in the film.
Though Tim is kept at a remove by this narrative, Rosenfield makes him a melancholy presence even as he works his way through a big rock star cliche.
The music is key, of course. The climax is provided by the concert where Jeff comes good and seems to make some peace with his father's memory and songs, but there is also an exhilarating scene where he and Gary Lucas jam on what would become "Grace". That's probably the most conventionally "biopic" moment here, but it feels quite loose and casual, as does much of the rest of the film.
It's nicely acted and surprisingly emotional; Jeff's arc is all about acceptance and empathy, and that is a difficult journey for him in this story. Crucially it is soundtracked by a couple of brilliant Tim Buckley songs too, though Jeff's music is absent.
From a distance, a dual biopic of Tim and Jeff Buckley seemed like a thoroughly bad idea.
Two beautiful singer-songwriters with magnificent voices, both dead tragically young: it appeared a recipe for biopic cliche disaster. Which makes Greetings From Tim Buckley a very pleasant surprise indeed.
It focuses on a few crucial days in the life of Jeff Buckley (Penn Badgely) in 1991, when he travelled to New York from California to appear at a Memorial concert for his father Tim (Ben Rosenfield). At the same time the story flashes back periodically to the period in Tim's life around the birth of his son, while he gigged on the road, slept with women in motels and generally lived like any musician in the 1960s probably would.
Narrowing the focus this way pays off - Jeff is portrayed as a damaged, needy, spontaneous young man, riddled with issues about his father and still discovering how best to use his talent. Over the few days in New York, he and Allie (Imogen Poots) begin a tentative relationship, and we largely see him through her curious, quietly baffled eyes. Badgely does well to show just how selfish and annoying Jeff could be without ever seeming unsympathetic, and he excels in the music scenes - a sequence where he performs a medley of Led Zepellin 3 acapella in a record shop is probably the best in the film.
Though Tim is kept at a remove by this narrative, Rosenfield makes him a melancholy presence even as he works his way through a big rock star cliche.
The music is key, of course. The climax is provided by the concert where Jeff comes good and seems to make some peace with his father's memory and songs, but there is also an exhilarating scene where he and Gary Lucas jam on what would become "Grace". That's probably the most conventionally "biopic" moment here, but it feels quite loose and casual, as does much of the rest of the film.
It's nicely acted and surprisingly emotional; Jeff's arc is all about acceptance and empathy, and that is a difficult journey for him in this story. Crucially it is soundtracked by a couple of brilliant Tim Buckley songs too, though Jeff's music is absent.
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
GOOD CAKE BAD CAKE: THE STORY OF LIR
(Shimmy Marcus, 2012)
LiR were one of the many Dublin bands who swarmed in the city's clubs and bars in the 1980s and '90s, hoping to be - in commercial terms at least - the next U2.
It never happened, and Shimmy Marcus' film is partly an attempt to explain why. It's composed of a mix of archive footage - much of it vintage camcorder stuff, some taken from Irish tv - and contemporary interviews with the band members, now mainly pudgy and middle-aged in sharp contrast to their skinny youthful faces in the old photographs and clips. They trace a familar narrative of young boredom on the streets of Dublin's Donaghmede, a few failed attempts at starting a band, and the gradual rise to competence and local popularity. Dublin then was rife with kids in bands; a few great, some good, most pretty shocking. But the majority got record deals and made albums in London or the States, only to limp back home a few years later when fame and fortune refused to come calling. LiR, despite an impressive fanbase and their reputation as an awesome live act, failed to do so, and they still can't quite understand why.
And so the undercurrent is pronounced early on - this will ultimately be a story of a band of naive young men who believe they were let down and even exploited by their older, cannier manager. Eventually they will travel to America, where a series of grinding, mentally and physically exhausting tours and a record deal coincide with members leaving, managers quitting, lots of stress, and no success.
This is a question Marcus' funny, interesting film never really successfully grapples with: were LiR ever good enough? For all that the band members talk about how it was only the music that really mattered, only two songs are really lingered over and identified, and much of the rest, while well-played and nicely sung, sound pretty dull, which is how this Dublin boy remembers them. The only allusions to this possibility are an acknowledgement that Irish critics were unusually damning about the band - rejected delusionally by one band member in a rant about how much hate there is in such a small country - and their American Label boss claiming that they hated the first LiR record (resulting in a vastly different American version).
None of this prevents their story from being quietly compelling. They mostly make for charming, articulate interviewees in a very Dublin way, mixing earnest homilies about the joy of rock with cynical jokes about life on the road, and there is something quite touching about two old childhood friends roaming the drab suburban streets of their youth and sharing reminiscences, wondering where it all went and why it never quite worked out. Marcus uses his footage nicely, keeping a rambling story and large cast tight and ordered throughout.
LiR were one of the many Dublin bands who swarmed in the city's clubs and bars in the 1980s and '90s, hoping to be - in commercial terms at least - the next U2.
It never happened, and Shimmy Marcus' film is partly an attempt to explain why. It's composed of a mix of archive footage - much of it vintage camcorder stuff, some taken from Irish tv - and contemporary interviews with the band members, now mainly pudgy and middle-aged in sharp contrast to their skinny youthful faces in the old photographs and clips. They trace a familar narrative of young boredom on the streets of Dublin's Donaghmede, a few failed attempts at starting a band, and the gradual rise to competence and local popularity. Dublin then was rife with kids in bands; a few great, some good, most pretty shocking. But the majority got record deals and made albums in London or the States, only to limp back home a few years later when fame and fortune refused to come calling. LiR, despite an impressive fanbase and their reputation as an awesome live act, failed to do so, and they still can't quite understand why.
And so the undercurrent is pronounced early on - this will ultimately be a story of a band of naive young men who believe they were let down and even exploited by their older, cannier manager. Eventually they will travel to America, where a series of grinding, mentally and physically exhausting tours and a record deal coincide with members leaving, managers quitting, lots of stress, and no success.
This is a question Marcus' funny, interesting film never really successfully grapples with: were LiR ever good enough? For all that the band members talk about how it was only the music that really mattered, only two songs are really lingered over and identified, and much of the rest, while well-played and nicely sung, sound pretty dull, which is how this Dublin boy remembers them. The only allusions to this possibility are an acknowledgement that Irish critics were unusually damning about the band - rejected delusionally by one band member in a rant about how much hate there is in such a small country - and their American Label boss claiming that they hated the first LiR record (resulting in a vastly different American version).
None of this prevents their story from being quietly compelling. They mostly make for charming, articulate interviewees in a very Dublin way, mixing earnest homilies about the joy of rock with cynical jokes about life on the road, and there is something quite touching about two old childhood friends roaming the drab suburban streets of their youth and sharing reminiscences, wondering where it all went and why it never quite worked out. Marcus uses his footage nicely, keeping a rambling story and large cast tight and ordered throughout.
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
NOT FADE AWAY
(David Chase, 2012)
On the surface, Not Fade Away might seem like quite a safe, even banal little coming of age drama set in the era-defining tumult of the US in the late 1960s. But that would be to underestimate the ambition and skill of writer-director David Chase. Rarely, in fact, has a filmmaker made a first film which is so perfectly honed, balancing a truly personal sense of artistic expression with accessible, populist storytelling. But then, while this may be Chase's debut feature, he was the creator and guiding force behind almost a decade of HBO's The Sopranos, and the sensibility evident in that show - the lyricism and incisive portrayal of characters in just a few brief scenes - is again on display here.
It tells the seemingly autobiographical story of Douglas (John Magaro), a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the '60s, who forms a band with some of his high school friends. Along the way, he also clashes with his conservative Italian father (James Gandolfini) and begins a relationship with the ethereal middle class goddess he worshipped through his school years, Grace (Bella Heathcote).
Again, that all sounds a bit like the kind of mid-budget studio films that proliferated in the '90s, heavy on the period detail, with a soundtrack filled with obvious, nostalgia-inducing '60s hits, perhaps featuring Alec Baldwin and an unmistakeable suggestion of The Wonder Years.
But Chase is too refined as a storyteller for that. His film is elliptical, skipping through years and crucial plot points, ensuring the audience has to be attuned to gesture and nuance to understand his characters. These bandmates are a credible, breathing portrayal of late teens and the tensions and dynamics crackling between them - a complex, often uneasy stew of loyalty, affection and jealousy, with different goals and needs compromising what begins as a shared dream. Douglas is a painfully true character; pretentious and a little conceited, only half-aware of how important music and film - art! Chase is unafraid of declaring - will be in his life. His clashes with his old-fashioned father are, again, beautifully shaded; with paternal frustration and love mingling in some bitter arguments as the two men grope for empathy and understanding.
The arc of the band's development runs parallel with Douglas' relationship with Grace. Early on their competence and the excitement of the music - a lot of pumped-up blues covers, influenced mainly by the Rolling Stones, a comparison underlined by the audacious opening scene where we see a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet on a London train, then hear our narrator, Douglas' little sister, compare that meeting to his founding of his own band - wins them fans and Chase show us triumphant early gigs at house parties and raw jamming sessions. Meanwhile he and Grace are slowly falling in love, little telling moments in conversation assuming massive importance, just as they do in life. Then the band cuts a demo, Douglas becomes singer and things are going well, just as Grace and he are a steady, loving couple.
Later everything gets messy, and the story shifts gears in the final act after a few small personal tragedies have rocked their young lives. Through all this, Chase is intent on the reality of experience. Mundane scenes in suburban kitchens and bickering relatives jostle with Douglas' important discoveries of Antonioni, Orson Welles and Leadbelly. His own relationship with blues music is cast in an uncomfortable light by a black co-workers love of Tony Bennett. The final scene is a breathtakingly bold move towards abstraction, and it finally suggests Chase's true goal here - to make a film about a young man's journey towards his calling, his discovery that art is what is truly important to him. The ending leaves a relationship in an ambiguous place - just as The Sopranos did - but thematically Chase has made himself clear.
What helps make this such a great little film are the details. All of the performances are good, and the period trappings feel authentic without ever splurging over into overstatement. The soundtrack is, predictably, superb, and Eigil Bryld's cinematography is richly atmospheric. But its the casual mastery of Chase that lingers. Like a great pop song, Not Fade Away is short and simple, yet somehow complex and even quietly profound.
On the surface, Not Fade Away might seem like quite a safe, even banal little coming of age drama set in the era-defining tumult of the US in the late 1960s. But that would be to underestimate the ambition and skill of writer-director David Chase. Rarely, in fact, has a filmmaker made a first film which is so perfectly honed, balancing a truly personal sense of artistic expression with accessible, populist storytelling. But then, while this may be Chase's debut feature, he was the creator and guiding force behind almost a decade of HBO's The Sopranos, and the sensibility evident in that show - the lyricism and incisive portrayal of characters in just a few brief scenes - is again on display here.
It tells the seemingly autobiographical story of Douglas (John Magaro), a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the '60s, who forms a band with some of his high school friends. Along the way, he also clashes with his conservative Italian father (James Gandolfini) and begins a relationship with the ethereal middle class goddess he worshipped through his school years, Grace (Bella Heathcote).
Again, that all sounds a bit like the kind of mid-budget studio films that proliferated in the '90s, heavy on the period detail, with a soundtrack filled with obvious, nostalgia-inducing '60s hits, perhaps featuring Alec Baldwin and an unmistakeable suggestion of The Wonder Years.
But Chase is too refined as a storyteller for that. His film is elliptical, skipping through years and crucial plot points, ensuring the audience has to be attuned to gesture and nuance to understand his characters. These bandmates are a credible, breathing portrayal of late teens and the tensions and dynamics crackling between them - a complex, often uneasy stew of loyalty, affection and jealousy, with different goals and needs compromising what begins as a shared dream. Douglas is a painfully true character; pretentious and a little conceited, only half-aware of how important music and film - art! Chase is unafraid of declaring - will be in his life. His clashes with his old-fashioned father are, again, beautifully shaded; with paternal frustration and love mingling in some bitter arguments as the two men grope for empathy and understanding.
The arc of the band's development runs parallel with Douglas' relationship with Grace. Early on their competence and the excitement of the music - a lot of pumped-up blues covers, influenced mainly by the Rolling Stones, a comparison underlined by the audacious opening scene where we see a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet on a London train, then hear our narrator, Douglas' little sister, compare that meeting to his founding of his own band - wins them fans and Chase show us triumphant early gigs at house parties and raw jamming sessions. Meanwhile he and Grace are slowly falling in love, little telling moments in conversation assuming massive importance, just as they do in life. Then the band cuts a demo, Douglas becomes singer and things are going well, just as Grace and he are a steady, loving couple.
Later everything gets messy, and the story shifts gears in the final act after a few small personal tragedies have rocked their young lives. Through all this, Chase is intent on the reality of experience. Mundane scenes in suburban kitchens and bickering relatives jostle with Douglas' important discoveries of Antonioni, Orson Welles and Leadbelly. His own relationship with blues music is cast in an uncomfortable light by a black co-workers love of Tony Bennett. The final scene is a breathtakingly bold move towards abstraction, and it finally suggests Chase's true goal here - to make a film about a young man's journey towards his calling, his discovery that art is what is truly important to him. The ending leaves a relationship in an ambiguous place - just as The Sopranos did - but thematically Chase has made himself clear.
What helps make this such a great little film are the details. All of the performances are good, and the period trappings feel authentic without ever splurging over into overstatement. The soundtrack is, predictably, superb, and Eigil Bryld's cinematography is richly atmospheric. But its the casual mastery of Chase that lingers. Like a great pop song, Not Fade Away is short and simple, yet somehow complex and even quietly profound.
Monday, 14 November 2011
GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
(Martin Scorsese, 2011)
Following the success of his superb, epic Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, Scorsese addresses another icon of 1960s rock in this near three and a half hour film on the "quiet Beatle", George Harrison.
In general, it's masterfully executed, focusing intently on the spiritual quest that characterised Harrison both as artist and human being, filled with brilliant archive footage and previously unseen photographs, narrated by key players in interviews and soundtracked by some of Harrison's best music.
It appears to assume some level of knowledge about Harrison's career, often skipping exposition in favour of a more reflective, elliptical or poetic portrayal of an event or phase in his life and is roughly structured around a few key moments: the formation of the Beatles, their rise to superstardom, his discovery of Indian mysticism, the breakup of the band, the making of "All Things Must Pass", the Concert for Bangladesh, his involvement in film production, the Travelling Wilburys, the assault by a deranged intruder that nearly killed him, and his death from cancer. That's a fascinating, full life, and Scorsese fills in around it with some equally fascinating details and snippets. But there are frustrating exclusions and some things are absolutely fudged. Harrison's life as a rock star who "loved women" is kept tellingly vague (his widow is a Producer), and most of his post-"All Things Must Pass" material is ignored. As far as this film is concerned, Harrison spent the last three decades of his life noodling in the studio, gardening, going to parties and meditating.
Then there is the related structural problem. One decade in Harrison's life - the 60s, the time he spent with the Beatles - dominates his reputation and legacy, but it has been exhaustively chronicled, and is dealt with in the first half here, while the next three decades take up the remainder. And Harrison, as talented a songwriter and musician as he was, was only the third greatest writer in the Beatles, and the more compelling figures of Lennon and McCartney each warp the narrative with the magnetism of genius whenever they feature.
But there are some fabulous moments here, from McCartney's thick scouse impression of a childhood friend describe George's hair as "like a fookin turban" to Olivia Harrison's chilling, shocked description of their struggle with a crazed attacker, to sundry clips of Harrison's own dry wit. And the music, of course, is fantastic.
Following the success of his superb, epic Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, Scorsese addresses another icon of 1960s rock in this near three and a half hour film on the "quiet Beatle", George Harrison.
In general, it's masterfully executed, focusing intently on the spiritual quest that characterised Harrison both as artist and human being, filled with brilliant archive footage and previously unseen photographs, narrated by key players in interviews and soundtracked by some of Harrison's best music.
It appears to assume some level of knowledge about Harrison's career, often skipping exposition in favour of a more reflective, elliptical or poetic portrayal of an event or phase in his life and is roughly structured around a few key moments: the formation of the Beatles, their rise to superstardom, his discovery of Indian mysticism, the breakup of the band, the making of "All Things Must Pass", the Concert for Bangladesh, his involvement in film production, the Travelling Wilburys, the assault by a deranged intruder that nearly killed him, and his death from cancer. That's a fascinating, full life, and Scorsese fills in around it with some equally fascinating details and snippets. But there are frustrating exclusions and some things are absolutely fudged. Harrison's life as a rock star who "loved women" is kept tellingly vague (his widow is a Producer), and most of his post-"All Things Must Pass" material is ignored. As far as this film is concerned, Harrison spent the last three decades of his life noodling in the studio, gardening, going to parties and meditating.
Then there is the related structural problem. One decade in Harrison's life - the 60s, the time he spent with the Beatles - dominates his reputation and legacy, but it has been exhaustively chronicled, and is dealt with in the first half here, while the next three decades take up the remainder. And Harrison, as talented a songwriter and musician as he was, was only the third greatest writer in the Beatles, and the more compelling figures of Lennon and McCartney each warp the narrative with the magnetism of genius whenever they feature.
But there are some fabulous moments here, from McCartney's thick scouse impression of a childhood friend describe George's hair as "like a fookin turban" to Olivia Harrison's chilling, shocked description of their struggle with a crazed attacker, to sundry clips of Harrison's own dry wit. And the music, of course, is fantastic.
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