[This review is in association with Garbo Laughs’ Queer Film Blogathon, an expansive celebration and analysis of non-gender-binary depictions or personages in cinema. The event is added additional timeliness due to the recent passing of a same-sex marriage in New York state. Velvet Goldmine is the only feature I’d yet to see from Queer Cinema pioneer Todd Haynes, and so I couldn’t miss the opportunity. Check the Blogathon link throughout the day for an assortment of posts from other talented writers.]
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More than any other American filmmaker, Todd Haynes understands that, when it comes to reconstructing history, incisive analysis is far more dependent on recreating an ethos rather than simply photographing biographical details. Although Velvet Goldmine could easily (and erroneously) be described as a biopic of David Bowie and, as a composite, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, et al., Haynes is much more interested in the zeitgeist of the late 1960s and early 70s, and how the leading glam rockers became the new sexual revolution’s icons.
But even that broader, less facile summary is vastly underestimating the number of things going on in Haynes’ film. Opening with a sci-fi prologue that credits Oscar Wilde as the eldest forebear of glam rock and pansexuality, the narrative proper then begins at its focal point, in which pop icon Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) stages his own murder at a concert, validating his own paranoid premonitions as stunned young fan Arthur (Christian Bale) looks on aghast. Flash forward ten years to 1984, in which Arthur, now a journalist, is asked to do a ten-year anniversary piece on the incident and locate Slade, who has been AWOL for several years. Thus begins a diegetic structure of the Citizen Kane mold, in which Arthur seeks out Slade’s former manager, ex-wife, and fellow glam rock icon to unravel the elusive star’s life and current whereabouts.
Despite its familiar structure, memory is much more plastic than normal; flashbacks are narrated by Arthur’s interviewees, but his own experiences and memories are blended in without distinction. This dual-memory is essential to Haynes’ objective, that is, of both charting the specific experiences of the movement’s luminaries and the general influence they had on their followers. These subtle transitions are worked in gracefully, though the multiple narrations, sometimes layered on top of one another, are occasionally incoherent. The rest of Haynes’ direction is no less dynamically bold. Returning to a freedom of form seen in Poison, queer British jargon is accompanied by subtitles to comical and reflexive (“She won’t be back tonight” is subtitled as “He won’t be back tonight”) and two people falling in love is communicated by a neon space journey to Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” Haynes acknowledges the role of camp in glam rock’s appeal and is anything but reluctant to reflect that sensibility in his filmmaking.
It may seem I’ve been avoiding the elephant in the room up to this point. What is it about glam rock that was so seductive? For Haynes, it’s the evolution of the 1960s sexual revolution to an even more liberal, brazen, pansexual disposition toward love and identity. And although focusing on glam rock, the film also contains nods to pioneers of other art forms, including Jack Smith and Andy Warhol. For Arthur and others, the movement represents an empirical exploration of their own sexuality, breaking down any and every sexual taboo between acquiescent human beings. Brian Slade comes to symbolize this new philosophy, marrying a woman while feinting a relationship with bad boy star Curt Wild (a fantastic Ewan McGregor) on stage and for the cameras. At the height of Slade’s fame, his personality becomes lost to his iconic image, the formerly platonic relationship between Slade and Wild being consummated. In this regard, Haynes is considerably prescient of a recurring theme of the last fifteen years, as reality and fiction become harder to distinguish and the Internet extends the Sartrean gaze of the other on everyone’s actions. While the death of glam rock (shortly after the murder hoax is received with ire from indignant fans) represents a major obstruction to Slade’s career, Arthur, too, finds his identity threatened by a regression to more conservative values. In 1984, he’s returned to the closet, with only his reminisces to substantiate his complicated individuality.
Grade: Essential.
Cannes Main Competition, 1998
New York Film Festival, 1998
Thanks for this reading. I think your take on the essential sadness of the film is great. Beautiful final sentence.
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Excellent review. I haven’t seen this film in years but it’s worth a re-visit. If nothing else, I remember it as an enriching visual and aural experience. Thank you for your contribution to the blogathon.
Thanks for reading, guys. Glad I could participate in the event.