There was one minor problem - she couldn't hold a note.
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021
#34 : The Velvet Underground
Todd Haynes’ documentary about the celebrated art-rockers, with insights from former members and friends, takes its job seriously and gets under the band’s skin.
Now - this is an interesting one. As part of the Rolling Stone exercise, I had to listen to four Velvet Underground albums and, whilst some parts were certainly interesting, for the most part I hated them. So I can't say I'm looking forward to any archive footage. But - there's no doubt that everyone in and close to the group has lived fascinating lives and their influence has ranged far and wide - not so much during the group's existence, but everyone claims to be fans now (except me!). And Todd Haynes is no slouch when it comes to making films (I particularly liked Carol), so I'm intrigued as to what I'm going to think about it all. Not sure I was going to find it a particularly fun-packed two hours though.
I was reasonably aware of Lou Reed and his life and it's safe to say I would not have got on with the man - he was an absolutely fascinating character but boy was he hard work. Which I knew, but it comes across that if he thought you were in any way comfortable, he would go out of his way to change that (often by driving to Harlem to buy heroin, it appears).
However, I wasn't very aware of John Cale and I very much enjoyed learning about him - although I think it's fair to say I wouldn't have got on with him either. But more in a way that I just wouldn't have understood anything he said about anything - he's a very musical theory kinda guy. It's also good to see him interviewed throughout the film - if anyone still around is able to provide a deep understanding of the motivations involved, you'd think it has to be him.
Moe Tucker is also interviewed (looking a LOT less rock and roll than John - but she did give up music to be a mother and a computer programmer, so I guess that's not all that surprising) - and whilst the other main band members are no longer with us, but the film does a reasonable job of interviewing relatives and friends to get as much as information as possible. Interestingly, Doug Yule (the other surviving member) is interviewed for the film, but off camera - however, the film is, understandably, somewhat mostly focussed on Lou and John.
I have to warn you that a lot of what's said in this film is utterly pretentious bollocks - but it all fits in with the group and the people involved, so it actually doesn't grate too much. In fact, if we heard that Lou liked nothing better than curling up in front of the TV watching a sitcom that really would have been grating. I'd also say that the film often has lots of images running concurrently on the screen at any given time and it also uses a lot of vintage footage which is not obviously relevant to the story. Yes, it's all very much in line with the ambience of the group, but it's all very confusing visually to bears of little brain such as myself and I found it unnecessarily distracting from the ongoing narrative.
One slightly surprising thing was that the time spent discussing their interactions with The Factory was one of the less interesting sections - at least until Nico turns up on the scene, who stood out as a character (in a film full of characters) and no mistake. This was somewhat made up for by the section on their time spent touring California which was amusing - Mary Woronov remembers the time with "they were hippies - of course we hated them!". The band toured and played some strange places indeed including art museums and airports - all very odd, but that was their way, methinks.
The breakdown of the time allocation in the film felt a bit off to me - we take 80 minutes of the 120 minutes to get as far as the second album. I think it would have benefited from spending more time digging into the disintegration of the group, which I can imagine involved a lot of tension - it feels like you could make a whole film about the time around John Cale exiting the band! And the final split is handled in a very downbeat fashion - they basically just tell us that Lou walked away and then they play a song and show us a load of random images. Odd. And, given how many people still bang on about the band, it felt like some more time could have been spent on their influence - but it felt like a conscious decision was made not to go down that route.
Random Wikipedia rabbit-hole fact about John Cale that I learned whilst poking about - it was his arrangement and recording of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" that propelled the song towards popularity (cemented by Jeff Buckley's further cover of his arrangement). And if you listen to Leonard's original it certainly is more of a challenging listen than the one we all know and love - as is often the case of Leonard. I love Jennifer Warnes' version of "First We Take Manhattan" but can't abide Lenny's original (and, surprisingly, I don't like the REM version either)
Anyways, overall, it's an interesting film which I'm glad I watched. It helped that it doesn't really feature too much archive footage of the group - and the footage it does feature is the slightly less challenging stuff, so the two hours passed quickly enough. I'm not sure I'd count it as a great film (which is often the case with documentaries for me - or the documentaries The Guardian like anyway) and it's not clear what Todd Haynes presence bought to the party. It's diverting enough though and not overly respectful of the group or their music in a way that would deter the non-fan - but I can imagine many a better way of spending two hours.
At the time of writing, the film is available on Apple TV - and since it's an Apple TV production, I suspect it will be staying there.
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