Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 118m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof
Synopsis:
A glam rock star of the 70s fakes his own on stage murder and years later a journalist and former fan is told to find out what happened to him. He discovers that however much he needed his idols to confront his own sexual identity, they were simply in it for the pose.
Review:
Watching vacuous people indulge in narcissism for two hours, only to be told that it was all a pose? Well thank you, we would never have guessed. Haynes has the effrontery to take various personalities and names from the seventies (Slade, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie), overlay a Citizen Kane flashback structure (Rosebud is here an emerald brooch traceable back to Oscar Wilde) and stick in enough bisexual jiggery-pokery just to tell us that that was what glam rock was all about! (Showmanship and ambivalence) There are times when this uncommonly dreary film actually resembles one of those seventies poseur classics (Performance, Tommy). A talented director seriously led astray by his own closeness to the material.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 118m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof
Synopsis:
A glam rock star of the 70s fakes his own on stage murder and years later a journalist and former fan is told to find out what happened to him. He discovers that however much he needed his idols to confront his own sexual identity, they were simply in it for the pose.
Review:
Watching vacuous people indulge in narcissism for two hours, only to be told that it was all a pose? Well thank you, we would never have guessed. Haynes has the effrontery to take various personalities and names from the seventies (Slade, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie), overlay a Citizen Kane flashback structure (Rosebud is here an emerald brooch traceable back to Oscar Wilde) and stick in enough bisexual jiggery-pokery just to tell us that that was what glam rock was all about! (Showmanship and ambivalence) There are times when this uncommonly dreary film actually resembles one of those seventies poseur classics (Performance, Tommy). A talented director seriously led astray by his own closeness to the material.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 118m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof
Synopsis:
A glam rock star of the 70s fakes his own on stage murder and years later a journalist and former fan is told to find out what happened to him. He discovers that however much he needed his idols to confront his own sexual identity, they were simply in it for the pose.
Review:
Watching vacuous people indulge in narcissism for two hours, only to be told that it was all a pose? Well thank you, we would never have guessed. Haynes has the effrontery to take various personalities and names from the seventies (Slade, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie), overlay a Citizen Kane flashback structure (Rosebud is here an emerald brooch traceable back to Oscar Wilde) and stick in enough bisexual jiggery-pokery just to tell us that that was what glam rock was all about! (Showmanship and ambivalence) There are times when this uncommonly dreary film actually resembles one of those seventies poseur classics (Performance, Tommy). A talented director seriously led astray by his own closeness to the material.