Music films: “Velvet Goldenmine”. Review, trailer, soundtrack

Velvet Goldine – 1998, USA/UK

Here we are in London early seventies, where the pop optimism of “Swinging” pushed the bar of the provocation on the “glam”, raising the bar of different notches. All free, or almost: to make up, experiment, break down the customs barriers between the sexes, transgress with style and fury. The “no future” of punk is still (a little) far away, the future is today, just stretch your hands and dispose of the nails. In this new world, so bizarre that they seem alien, you can become anyone: perhaps even yourself. We are from the parts of Ziggy Stordust, of course. To David Bowie and his incarnations this film by Todd Haynes – starting from the title, “Velvet Goldenmine”, which is that of one of his songs of those years, is widely inspired. At the exit the film did not have a great feedback, but the weather, even if he did not turn it into a cult, made him justice: to try to believe.

The story is that of the dazzling ascent and fall of an imaginary idol of the glam rock, Brian Slade, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In 1974, at the height of success (achieved not without some artifice), Brian stumbled his murder in the middle of concert; But what was supposed to be a promotional gimmick escapes hands, is revealed and the star, fallen out of disgrace, literally leaves the scene. After all, the image is everything …

The film tells this story (and the atmosphere of the period) through the research of Arthur (Christian Bale), a journalist who in 1984, ten years later, was commissioned to reconstruct the incident. For Arthur it is a sort of flashback, having attended that world at the time, which appears and is now light years away from the flatness and grayness of its present. Nostalgia and disenchantment are therefore the feelings they make from counter -anti to Brian’s feathers and follies and his associates, among which the ambiguous Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) stands out. And bitterness, also, because the market is cynical, the success is fragile, and then it cannot be pretended forever. Or maybe yes yes? When the border between reality and fiction fades, when things get confused, can you stop or do you have to change mask? Where is Brian finished? Or rather: Who Did you become Brian? Arthur’s is an investigation into a past that will not return but that does not want to pass. The ghosts, the regrets remain. It remains to be told to a fairy tale of a country of dreams that we have remained a pin between our fingers: little, but still a proof that there was once something, something was true. For nostalgics, “Velvet Goldenmine” is archeology of the heart, and the excavations can go deep up to meet Oscar Wilde, here hired as a scandalous guiding spirit.

Ewan McGregor sings and moves like a hybrid between Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. And Bowie, of course, of which, however, in the rich soundtrack, there is not even a song: it was he who denying the use of the songs, considering the film a distortion of his image. Thus, “Velvet” opens with a piece of Brian Eno (“Needle in the Camel’s Eye”, very “Bowiano”) and closes on the credits with “Make Me Smile (like Up and See me)” by Steve Harley, because “Win or Lose, It’s Hard to Smile”.

Trailer

Soundtrack