Post by Fuggle on Jan 12, 2008 16:40:22 GMT -5
It ain't me, babe
Chris Robinson
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, January 12, 2008
In Philip Roth's latest book, Exit Ghost, his alter ego, Nathan Zukerman, nearing the end of his life, worries that despite all his achievements as a writer he will "wind up, after death, remembered, if at all, for a story made up about him, his covert brand of baseness discovered and described with uncompromising candour, clarity, self-certainty, with grave concern for the most delicate issues of morality, and with no small measure of delight." If the music biopic is any gauge, Zukerman is right to worry. From it's earliest roots (The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, 1939) to recent films like Ray and Walk The Line, many musicians have had their often tragic lives painted with the same brush of sentimental blandness. The tormented musician has become such a cliché that it's become the target of parody, as in the recent box-office dud Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which twisted the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
Even the earliest music biopics have a tinge of darkness. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and The Glenn Miller Story (1953) both end with a death -- but touched on briefly and never overshadowing the achievements of the artists. These films, like others of their era, are foremost about the artist and their music and not about their personal troubles.
The failing of these films is their naiveté. We see artists who are lovable, modest people with no apparent flaws. Their rise to fame is relatively easy.
It's not until Lady Sings The Blues (1972), that the music biopic takes a significantly darker route. The career of jazz singer Billie Holiday is overshadowed by her personal demons, especially drugs.
Whereas earlier films avoided delving into the performer's background or morality, Lady Sings the Blues revels in it. The film opens with a drugged-out Holiday getting tossed into prison, and then shows us her difficult and impoverished roots as a prostitute, being raped and generally being treated like dirt.
There is some light in the end. The film ends with Holiday achieving her dream of playing Carnegie Hall. As she savours the moment, a montage of newspaper clippings reveal that she will succumb to drugs again and die prematurely. However, for a moment, Holiday achieved her dream.
Does this sound familiar? Lady Sings the Blues was such a success that it established the template for music biopics: ? Poor, abusive or tragic childhood. In Ray (about Ray Charles) and Walk The Line it's the death of a brother. In The Doors it's a dead native American seen by a young Jim Morrison.
? Meteoric rise to fame, followed by a fatal or near fatal struggle with drugs or alcohol. Examples are Bird (about Charlie Parker), The Doors or Sid and Nancy (about Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen). Often the artist overcomes the demons and makes it to the top, as in Ray, Shine (about pianist David Helfgott, Walk The Line or Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn).
Complex and inconsistent lives are packaged for the audience into clear, linear stories that are easy to understand. Viewers can sit back, grab a tissue and check their head at the door.
Two recent biopics, Control and I'm Not There, have reignited the genre by avoiding these tired conventions.
Control, about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, is a conventional linear narrative, but it's a sparse and bleak work that avoids the histrionics of previous biopics.
We watch Curtis's rise to fame and his eventual suicide, but are no closer to understanding him in the end. We can't know who Curtis was because it's not entirely clear that he knew who he was. Shot in high contrast black and white by director Anton Corbijn, Control suggests that lives are not easily definable.
While I'm Not There, which opened yesterday at the Bytowne Cinema, is grabbing attention for its radical interpretation of Bob Dylan and the music biopic, director Todd Haynes' was already toying with the genre in Velvet Goldmine (1998).
In Velvet Goldmine, Haynes turns his eye toward the glam rock of the 1970s, and in particular the relationship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop (fictionalized as Brian Slade and Curt Wild).
Using the structure of Citizen Kane, a reporter (Christian Bale) is assigned to find the truth about the fake death of 1970s pop star Slade. As he interviews people connected with Slade, the reporter revisits his own past as a fan of glam.
Anticipating I'm Not There, Velvet Goldmine is about the complexity, even the impossibility, of identity. While every other music biopic seems to tell us with clarity and self-certainty who the artist is, Haynes suggests that this is nonsense, that we can never know. As Slade's ex-wife says, "he became someone else then again, he always was." What is also unique about Velvet Goldmine is that for once the role of the fan is considered. It's the fans who not only create the identity of the star (as Haynes is doing), but also take away pieces of that identity for themselves. Glam rock, suggests Haynes, was an important voice for homosexuals. While the hippie era professed to be about tolerance and liberation, in fact it was quite a conservative social group. The emergence of Bowie, Pop and other glam rockers helped homosexual kids find a world where they belonged.
I'm Not There takes the theme of identity further. Six actors (including a woman and a young African-American boy) play variations of Dylan. What makes Dylan so special to Haynes is his ability to roll with the punches and keep re-creating himself. In the film Dylan says, "I don't know who I am most of the time." While this uncertainty likely contributed to Ian Curtis's suicide and a host of problems that swallowed other artists, Dylan, a master faker and impersonator from the start, has always been keenly aware of the fragility and impossibility of identity. A large part of Dylan's success and mystique stems from his refusal to be compartmentalized. As Brian Slade's manager says in Velvet Goldmine: "It's not what you are but the legend that grows around it." While this will undoubtedly frustrate audiences, Haynes is liberating the musician and the music biopic from its Hollywood shackles and returning it to the hands of the artists and the fans. As Richard Gere's Dylan says in I'm Not There, "yesterday, today and tomorrow are all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen." Whether you let that room imprison or liberate you is your choice.
Chris Robinson is artistic director of the Ottawa Animation Festival and the author of several books on animation and film.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
Chris Robinson
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, January 12, 2008
In Philip Roth's latest book, Exit Ghost, his alter ego, Nathan Zukerman, nearing the end of his life, worries that despite all his achievements as a writer he will "wind up, after death, remembered, if at all, for a story made up about him, his covert brand of baseness discovered and described with uncompromising candour, clarity, self-certainty, with grave concern for the most delicate issues of morality, and with no small measure of delight." If the music biopic is any gauge, Zukerman is right to worry. From it's earliest roots (The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, 1939) to recent films like Ray and Walk The Line, many musicians have had their often tragic lives painted with the same brush of sentimental blandness. The tormented musician has become such a cliché that it's become the target of parody, as in the recent box-office dud Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which twisted the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
Even the earliest music biopics have a tinge of darkness. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and The Glenn Miller Story (1953) both end with a death -- but touched on briefly and never overshadowing the achievements of the artists. These films, like others of their era, are foremost about the artist and their music and not about their personal troubles.
The failing of these films is their naiveté. We see artists who are lovable, modest people with no apparent flaws. Their rise to fame is relatively easy.
It's not until Lady Sings The Blues (1972), that the music biopic takes a significantly darker route. The career of jazz singer Billie Holiday is overshadowed by her personal demons, especially drugs.
Whereas earlier films avoided delving into the performer's background or morality, Lady Sings the Blues revels in it. The film opens with a drugged-out Holiday getting tossed into prison, and then shows us her difficult and impoverished roots as a prostitute, being raped and generally being treated like dirt.
There is some light in the end. The film ends with Holiday achieving her dream of playing Carnegie Hall. As she savours the moment, a montage of newspaper clippings reveal that she will succumb to drugs again and die prematurely. However, for a moment, Holiday achieved her dream.
Does this sound familiar? Lady Sings the Blues was such a success that it established the template for music biopics: ? Poor, abusive or tragic childhood. In Ray (about Ray Charles) and Walk The Line it's the death of a brother. In The Doors it's a dead native American seen by a young Jim Morrison.
? Meteoric rise to fame, followed by a fatal or near fatal struggle with drugs or alcohol. Examples are Bird (about Charlie Parker), The Doors or Sid and Nancy (about Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen). Often the artist overcomes the demons and makes it to the top, as in Ray, Shine (about pianist David Helfgott, Walk The Line or Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn).
Complex and inconsistent lives are packaged for the audience into clear, linear stories that are easy to understand. Viewers can sit back, grab a tissue and check their head at the door.
Two recent biopics, Control and I'm Not There, have reignited the genre by avoiding these tired conventions.
Control, about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, is a conventional linear narrative, but it's a sparse and bleak work that avoids the histrionics of previous biopics.
We watch Curtis's rise to fame and his eventual suicide, but are no closer to understanding him in the end. We can't know who Curtis was because it's not entirely clear that he knew who he was. Shot in high contrast black and white by director Anton Corbijn, Control suggests that lives are not easily definable.
While I'm Not There, which opened yesterday at the Bytowne Cinema, is grabbing attention for its radical interpretation of Bob Dylan and the music biopic, director Todd Haynes' was already toying with the genre in Velvet Goldmine (1998).
In Velvet Goldmine, Haynes turns his eye toward the glam rock of the 1970s, and in particular the relationship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop (fictionalized as Brian Slade and Curt Wild).
Using the structure of Citizen Kane, a reporter (Christian Bale) is assigned to find the truth about the fake death of 1970s pop star Slade. As he interviews people connected with Slade, the reporter revisits his own past as a fan of glam.
Anticipating I'm Not There, Velvet Goldmine is about the complexity, even the impossibility, of identity. While every other music biopic seems to tell us with clarity and self-certainty who the artist is, Haynes suggests that this is nonsense, that we can never know. As Slade's ex-wife says, "he became someone else then again, he always was." What is also unique about Velvet Goldmine is that for once the role of the fan is considered. It's the fans who not only create the identity of the star (as Haynes is doing), but also take away pieces of that identity for themselves. Glam rock, suggests Haynes, was an important voice for homosexuals. While the hippie era professed to be about tolerance and liberation, in fact it was quite a conservative social group. The emergence of Bowie, Pop and other glam rockers helped homosexual kids find a world where they belonged.
I'm Not There takes the theme of identity further. Six actors (including a woman and a young African-American boy) play variations of Dylan. What makes Dylan so special to Haynes is his ability to roll with the punches and keep re-creating himself. In the film Dylan says, "I don't know who I am most of the time." While this uncertainty likely contributed to Ian Curtis's suicide and a host of problems that swallowed other artists, Dylan, a master faker and impersonator from the start, has always been keenly aware of the fragility and impossibility of identity. A large part of Dylan's success and mystique stems from his refusal to be compartmentalized. As Brian Slade's manager says in Velvet Goldmine: "It's not what you are but the legend that grows around it." While this will undoubtedly frustrate audiences, Haynes is liberating the musician and the music biopic from its Hollywood shackles and returning it to the hands of the artists and the fans. As Richard Gere's Dylan says in I'm Not There, "yesterday, today and tomorrow are all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen." Whether you let that room imprison or liberate you is your choice.
Chris Robinson is artistic director of the Ottawa Animation Festival and the author of several books on animation and film.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008