![]() ![]() Instead, let’s revel in the power of association: between the elder Reed’s voice and the young Reed’s face, for example, or between monologued personal histories and the visual detritus that throws the personal into relief. ![]() That’s the stuff of rock legend and bloated biopics. But The Velvet Underground is too wise in its passion for lore and ephemera, the nit and the grit of lived history to whittle itself down to linear, causal mythologizing. These are origins that each man would in some ways reject. Imagine that the indomitable Welshman John Cale’s life story comes next, much in the same way: a long shot of the young man’s face – again, by way of Warhol – and a life narrated in retrospect, a split-screen mix of personal archive and period stock, with pointed music cues directing us to the man’s externally imposed classical origins.Īdvertisement Performance of the Velvet Underground in Boston Reed’s own recollections of his early forays into music, his choice to forego proper music lessons to instead play along with doo-wop and early rock on the radio, booking gigs while still in high school. A mix of family photographs and stock footage illustrate tales of a father’s emotional absence. Balancing Lou Reed’s face, we see other images begin to emerge in the other panel: Reed’s sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, narrating life and that imperfect Long Island upbringing as she and her brother knew it. ![]() Haynes uses multiple screens through this documentary. This is one of many of Andy Warhol’s “Screen Test” series that he shot with Lou Reed and others at The Factory in New York City. The film opens with us looking at Lou Reed’s face, looking out at us, on one panel of the screen. John Cale with Lou Reed & Sterling Morrison Better to give us the Velvet Underground themselves narrating their pains and obsessions, for us to sit back, sponge-like, and be as overwhelmed by what, in Haynes’s hands, suddenly feels radical, again. But Haynes has not fashioned this movie into a virtual classroom in which we will all dutifully jot down notes on John Cage and Allan Ginsberg. The movie is not averse to the straightforward use of talking heads or archival audio to tell a straight-ish story where it counts. The Velvets proved to be far too extreme to enjoy mainstream success, but extreme enough to inspire acolytes who, as Brian Eno once famously pointed out, all formed their own bands. Haynes, the uncommonly sensitive director of Carol, I’m Not There and Far From Heaven, among others, isn’t here to give us a blow-by-blow account of the New York band that was adopted by Andy Warhol’s Factory scene. After screening for a week at the Nuart Theatre in West L.A., it opens on October 15 at several Laemmle theatres around town and can be screened virtually on Apple TV. These experimenters in cinema made an elastic, volatile toy of the medium in the way that the Velvet Underground’s music toyed with (and upset) the conventions of rock & roll that the band chewed through in its short career. Haynes’ film engages the experimental aesthetics of the 1960s and the experimental filmmaking of Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Angers, Shirley Clark, and, of course, Andy Warhol. A film about the Velvets would not be satisfying if it was conventional, and following normal rules is definitely not an approach that would give Todd Haynes a reason to make his first real documentary. Todd Haynes makes it clear from the start that this whirlwind tour of the short-lived but immeasurably influential life of this band The Velvet Underground will by-and-large be told using the visual syntax of the band’s peers. Los Angeles, CA ( The Hollywood Times) 10/22/21 – Definitely worth seeing is Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground, a rock ‘n’ roll documentary that doesn’t really follow the normal rules for rock-docs. Andy Warhol designed cover of first album of the Velvet Undergroundīy Jim Gilles Nico with Andy Warhol at The Factory ![]()
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