• Flawed film, with some visual highlights, from a talented director
  • Haynes uses the Coen’s Carter Burwell for the music
  • It’s a film about David Bowie—though not about Bowie—much in the way I’m not there is from 2007 from Haynes. I’m not there is the superior work but they are clear film relatives (as are safe, far from heaven and carol from Haynes)
  • Quote intertitles I love as well as setting up both 1974-1984 time era
  • The narrative is taken from citizen kane– it’s a reporter looking into a hoax assassination of Rhys Meyers’s Bowie character. The reporter (Bale) is trying to find out about the man and interviewing people who knew him. It’s genius and we get a very fractured post-modern view of the fam that is, and remains, undefinable
  • There’s even a man in a wheelchair remembering the past like the Joseph Cotton character in Kane
  • Haynes’ experiments with a million ideas here but doesn’t follow most of them through. I love the gay vernacular subtitles but it’s only done once, there’s some interesting mirror work (another thing taken from Welles but it’s not throughout either)
  • Multiple voice overs from the multiple flashbacks works with the form just fine
  • Loaded with period decor- glitter- Haynes is clearly in love with the era, energized—as he is with his 1950’s suburbia Douglas Sirk films— the indulgences and opulence are warranted and you can see the directed who did the mise-en-scene from far from heaven here
  • The casting of McGregor is inspired- it uses his musical talents (later on display in moulin rouge) and the heroin addiction (trainspotting)
  • Another flaw is you never fully get the reason for the big build-up and search. This isn’t a figure like kane and you certainly don’t have an answer
  • Large house with furniture covered up like kane
  • From a theme and subject matter it clearly lines up with Haynes- not only is a brilliant music biopic pairing with I’m not there but the complex relationships here of all the characters and their sexuality plays well with Haynes as one of the founding fathers of both Queer cinema and indie cinema
  • Recommend

 

 

another viewing- July 2018

  • these are talented young actors in 1998- it’s weird to see Bale (10 years before Dark Knight of course) as 3rd or 4th billing behind McGregor and Jonathan Rhys Meyers
  • an anthem for “the others”- or queer cinema — Haynes taps into that
  • Oscar Wilde from outer space 100 years ago during prologue– floating camera
  • oscar nomination for inspired period glittery costume design
  • at least once i noticed a pink cigarette burn transition in the upper right hand corner
  • of course the narrative approach (journalist with flashbacks) is from Citizen Kane– but unlike Kane this is told out of order in the flashbacks
  • McGregor is the Iggy Pop character- in some parts the performance is solid but that accent– rough
  • “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” is an awesome song– vocal by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
  • much of the dialogue is from Wilde himself
  • the name of the film from a Bowie song
  • quick Barbie Doll sequence — nod to Haynes own “Superstar”- – Karen Carpenter film
  • Recommend