VELVET GOLDMINE (director/writer:Todd Haynes; screenwriter: James Lyons; cinematographer: Maryse Alberti; cast: Ewan McGregor (Curt Wild), Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (Brian Slade), Toni Collette (Mandy Slade), Christian Bale (Arthur Stuart), Eddie Izzard (Jerry Divine), Emily Woof (Shannon), Michael Feast (Cecil), 1998)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
I'm not a fan of glam rock, my musical partialities are more in the line for classical music or '60s rock. Glam is the kind of music that is pretty to look at for short periods of time but when more closely scrutinized could turn ugly. That is both the virtue and problem with this entertaining and stylish celebration of the rock music scene by Todd Haynes (Safe/Poison), that has the right musical feel but offers no depth and little character development in its story. This fictionalized story is a thin disguise for David Bowie's bio, and it was able along the way to rip-off the Citizen Kane way of telling a biography in a fictionalized way. And if that weren't enough of a splash in the water of cause célèbre, Haynes throws a bit of the Oscar Wilde biography into the fiction presented. He, of course, can be assumed to be the patron saint for all such "rock dandies."
Glam rock star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who acts catlike as a character named Maxwell Demon, predicts his own death onstage. The death is found out to be a hoax and his career is ruined. It is 1984, ten years later than that incident, and a New York newspaper editor assigns a reporter Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) to see if he can dig up what happened to the rock star, sending him back to London, the reporter's place of birth and early tribulation.
The reporter interviews his first manager, who is seen in a wheelchair (remember Joseph Cotten in Citizen Kane!), as he tells of how he was dastardly replaced by the flamboyant manager Jerry Divine (Brit comedian-Izzard), and then he interviews the star's ex-wife Mandy (Collette), now a drunken burnout, as he tries to unravel the mysteries of the enigmatic performer. What he finds is a show biz of glitter glamor, a musician wearing a mask so he can become who he is, the coming out party for a bisexual revolution, the wreckage of a marriage and his career (similar to Orson Welles's Hollywood career going down after Citizen Kane), and the great love affair between Brian and an American performance artist, the junkie Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), who influences that style of performing onto Brian, seeing dollar signs in Brian's eyes instead of the love that was in Brian's eyes. It resulted in a ménage à trois, among Brian, Curt, and Mandy, taking place in the swinging London of the 1970s, with a most unsentimental view of their lifestyle being presented.
The film works best as a music video and if you like the music, you'll probably love the film. As a film it was a colorful spectacle, wonderfully performed, very energetic, and it had some witty dialogue; but, it failed to tell a cohesive story and failed to capture what that period of the 1970s was about. It was hard to tell what Haynes was trying to expose or tell about this fictionalized Bowie-Ziggy Stardust-like character. The film made no comment about the money angle in the business, or the public- or- the private thoughts of the musician. It was all vague and superficial, I suppose, just like glamor is. Besides, I don't really know how worthwhile it is to uncover his mystery life-like who cares! Anyway, he wasn't made into an interesting character by Slade's characterization of him-I think David Bowie is a much more interesting character than Brian Slade. When Mandy explains his downfall by saying he got lost in a lie, it is hard to feel any sympathy for him or for those he took down with him.
If you don't mind having an empty feeling after seeing a film, then this one could be your kind of nourishment. There was some attempt to bring a deeper storyline into focus, as the sexually inhibited reporter assigned to the story was actually in attendance on the night of Slade's hoax, and he was shown in flashback to be influenced by the performer's sexual freedom, discovering his own bisexuality through the performance. The suggestion made was that these performers are role models and influence many teens-for good or bad. Unfortunately, the film did not pick up on that thread of the story, as it continued on in its glitzy musical style. The last serious thing it said, comes about in a conversation between Arthur and Curt in a morbid neighborhood bar, where Curt says:"We set out to change the world- but just changed ourselves." Arthur says, "What's wrong with that?" Curt, "If you don't look at the world." I guess something must have happened to the two performing artists along the way, but it must have happened offscreen, because it didn't happen onscreen.
REVIEWED ON 1/19/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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