Patsy Kensit attempting to make an anthem of a song called “Having It All” in Temple’s Absolute Beginners.
I have to admit I was kind of disappointed with my level of disappointment with Baz Luhrmann’s film of The Great Gatsby. At least one other critic of my acquaintance has noted that as summer movies go, it’s the one that’s the most fun to argue about, but I’m not much inclined to join said fun, just because I don’t feel all that strongly about this Gatsby. While A.O. Scott avers that the movie is “eminently enjoyable,” and good for him, I found it a bit of a slog, although when I cite its slogginess I take care to make it clear that I’m in now real way offended by what Luhrmann “does” with or to the book; as much as I was unengaged, I wasn’t affronted either. If anything, I found the enterprise, for all its mammoth-ness, kind of tired. Flappers dancing to Jay‑Z did not excite my sense of sacrilege at all; indeed, I found that and other such showbiz fillips as the movie offered entirely expected.
Now when Luhrmann had the cheek to put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in Moulin Rouge, and have it bellowed by Jim Broadbent, that was my idea of purposeful, almost revelatory sacrilege, and a reminder that an anti-showbiz protest is in fact an irreplaceable staple of showbiz. The anachronisms of Gatsby don’t just tell us what we already know, they make points that unduly flatter us, as we intone sentences about how the materialism of the so-called Jazz Age is echoed in today’s hip-hop fueled madness for “bling,” and man, I just lost a little bit of the will to live merely typing that. The more people have been talking about Gatsby, the less I’ve been inclined to think about Gatsby. Instead, my thought turn to Julien Temple, about ten years Luhrmann’s senior, and I think, why isn’t HE allowed to make these sorts of movies anymore. By “these sorts of movies” you might think I mean, yeah, Baz Luhrmann movies, that is, gargantuan-budgeted lavish real-or-quasi-musicals—and think how genuinely sacreligious Gatsby would have been as a real musical, with its lead character, say, rapping about how good it felt to be, well, him; how queasily exhilarating the picture could have been if Luhrmann had risked that sort of ridiculousness and made it pay off—that take years in the gestation and production. Not quite, I’d answer. But in thinking, or not thinking, about Gatsby I also got to really thinking about Absolute Beginners, the musical Temple, a punk-weaned filmmaker who assembled a Sex Pistols feature of sorts before moving to music videos, made in 1986, quite some time before Luhrmann’s film debut, Strictly Ballroom. The picture was poorly recieved at the time it came out. Looking at it now, it seems practically prophetic of the whole Luhrmann aesthetic, albeit with some interesting differences—none of which really explain why Temple’s career in doing this sort of thing faltered, while Luhrmann’s took off. That’s not to say that Absolute Beginners is anything like a perfect film, but in terms of its conception and overall “attitude” it’s remarkably and often giddily free. Adapted from a Colin MacInnes novel of social upheaval in ’50s London, it stays true to its source in its fashion (e.g., a sense of social consciousness/conscience) while exercising a colorful fluidity in most other respects. I looked at it the other day and thought it held up pretty well; not only that, all the things that critics of its day gave it a hard time for—established pop songs lip-synched by the actors/characters within the diegisis, a purposeful carelessness in coloring outside the lines of its ostensible period, and more—are now regarded as, depending on the critic, entirely acceptable devices (particularly when Luhrmann uses them), or no big deal. It’s true that Temple doesn’t nose around the vicinity of Camp as much as Luhrmann does, and that the relentless Brit-centricness of Absolute Beginners’ content might have been as much of a roadblock to its making a wide impact as its formal playfulness was…but all things considered I have to say that Beginners qualifies as a movie that was genuinely ahead of its time, and that Luhrmann came along with an ethos that flirted with the postmodern even as it gave up big fat heartfelt melodramatic frissons in a superelaborate package just when mass audiences were ready for it. Temple’s subsequent Earth Girls Are Easy is also way better than its reputation suggests, but doesn’t function as well for my case because it’s more overtly frivolous.
These days Temple mostly gets to make imaginative, knowledgable documentaries about music and musicians, but his last fiction feature, 2000’s Pandaemonium, which sort of makes rock stars of Wordworth and Coleridge, albeit not in a stupid way, showed that he’s still in possession of the technical chops and the perspective to make cheekily new the things audiences have become accustomed to thinking of as old. It rather makes one regret that the only filmmaker today with permission to make Baz Luhrmann movies is, well, Baz Luhrmann.
I’m looking forward to see how he handles the Marvin Gaye biopic SEXUAL HEALING, starring LAW & ORDER’s Jesse L. Martin. I believe it focuses on the final years of Gaye’s life, so it’s a pretty rich subject.
Hey, I thought I was the only person on earth who had a soft spot for BEGINNERS. Nice to see it’s on someone else’s cultural radar.
Beginners is one I’ve often been half-tempted by over the years when seeing it on the video shelves. Would fully agree on Earth Girls – perfectly orchestrated frivolity, which is hard…like whimsy, it doesn’t take much for it to spill over into unbearable, and it never comes close.
One more hand raised for Beginners, and although I don’t dislike Baz’s fast editing aesthetic (I think when he’s on, he makes it work for him), one interesting contrast between him and what Temple does in Absolute Beginners is how long Temple actually holds a shot for. I’m particularly thinking of the tracking shot that starts the movie after the opening credits. And I love the music (Ray Davies’ “Quiet Life” is alone worth the price of admission) and choreography, and I still think Patsy Kensit should have become a bigger star than she did. Oddly enough, the one bum note in the movie, for me, was Bowie; his singing was great (of both the title song and “Motivation”), but his attempt at an American accent was beyond annoying.
The Bowie accent is him playing an over the top imitation American, and I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be awful. He slips into his natural Cockney accent late in the film in his one moment of honesty; the “American” voice is the voice of soulless mercenary capitalism.
Peter, you’re not the first person to argue that, and that’s a fair point; I just kept thinking, though, “Okay, we get it, you’re evil!” And it grated on my ears.
“I still think Patsy Kensit should have become a bigger star than she did.”
We’ll always have Lethal Weapon 2.
“Now when Luhrmann had the cheek to put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in Moulin Rouge (sic), and have it bellowed by Jim Broadbent, that was my idea of purposeful, almost revelatory sacrilege, and a reminder that an anti-showbiz protest is in fact an irreplaceable staple of showbiz.”
I have real thoughts on your Julian Temple brainstorm, as I saw (and didn’t really like) Absolute Beginners at a young enough age that I no longer trust that viewer’s judgment.
But as to your quote I pulled here:
I’m glad you mention that moment. When I first viewed Moulin Rouge!, that moment was THE hinge into the movie for me. It comes pretty early on, everything before it was frenetic, and until that moment I couldn’t decide whether to fight or go with the flick. But that one moment, somehow, was where I decided I was In Good Hands, and could relax and go with the movie.
I’m not sure exactly why that moment was THE hinge, though I do have two or three theories. But it really is crucial to the movie’s success, somehow. And if you’re going to pick a Baz high moment, that’s the one to pick…
At the time Temple said his main inspiration was Coppola’s “One From The Heart”
The novel of ‘Absolute Beginners’ is terrific, by the way, like Damon Runyon writing about Mods:
“The night was glorious, out there. The air was sweet as a cool bath, the stars were peeping nosily beyond the neons, and the citizens of the Queendom, in their jeans and separates, were floating down the Shaftesbury Avenue canals like gondolas. Everyone had loot to spend, everyone had a bath with verbena salts behind them, and nobody had broken hearts, because they were all ripe for the easy summer evening. The rubber plants in the espressos had been dusted, and the smooth white lights of the new-style Chinese restaurants — not the old Mah Jongg categories, but the latest thing with broad glass fronts, and Dacron curtainings, and a beige carpet over the interiors — were shining a dazzle, like some monster telly screens. Even those horrible old Anglo-Saxon public houses — all potato crisps and flat, stale ales, and puddles on the counter bar, and spittle — looked quite alluring, provided you didn’t push those two-ton doors that pinch your arse, and wander in. In fact, the capital was a night horse dream. ‘My Lord, one thing is certain, and that’s that they’ll make musicals one day about the glamour-studded 1950s.’”
Patsy is Daisy’s daughter in the Redford Gatsby.
TCM will be showing ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS early in the a.m. of June 1st. Check those local listings for your time zone.
“It rather makes one regret that the only filmmaker today with permission to make Baz Luhrmann movies is, well, Baz Luhrmann.”
Well, regret or not, let’s look at the “why”?
And I’ll go with: Baz is the only one with the permission to make Baz Luhrmann movies for the same reason that Wes is the one with the permission to make Wes Anderson movies.
If you create a marginally profitable genre that no one bothers to steal, it’s yours forever…
Other people do make “Wes Anderson movies” – it’s just that they usually suck without him directing.