Brand: A Second Coming
My moovie woovie.
When Russell Brand was a boy, he strolled into his mother’s bedroom and announced he was the “second Jesus”. Most children grow out of this dressing-up stage; Brand, as we know, did not. Filmed during his 2013 Messiah Complex tour, this catches him in his most insufferable ‘John Lennon-as-Christ’ mode. But while sharing Lennon’s conviction as some kind of trickster-revolutionary, he doesn’t possess the same level of smarts.
Director Ondi Timoner has previously charted the self-sabotaging of a deluded megalomaniac in Dig!, and this is nothing if not warts ‘n’ all, chronicling Brand’s rise (and possible fall), from the days when he dressed like an Adam Ant video extra to his more recent forays into social activism and haranguing Paxman on Newsnight.
Even his friends and collaborators suggest you’d be nuts to follow him. As he proudly tells an admiring crowd, he may be a narcissist, but “I’m your narcissist”. Still, at times, as on America’s Morning Joe show, gently ribbing the clueless presenters, he can be terrifically, naturally funny. He’s also very sound on the subject of drug addiction – well, he ought to be, he’s done the research.
Yet for all the freneticism, there’s a decidedly melancholy air hanging over this documentary: since it was made, real life – and real politics – has rather passed Brand by. The media is now preoccupied with another would-be revolutionary – one who even bears the initials ‘J.C.’ Far from being the Second Coming, was Brand merely a John the Baptist figure all along?
THE VERDICT A troubling portrait of a modern phenomenon, it won’t convert the haters, but it’s a frequently watchable car-crash spectacle nonetheless. › Certificate 15 Director Ondi Timoner Starring Simon Amstell, Andrew Antonio, Barbara Brand Distributor Metrodome Running time 104 mins