The Sparks Brothers
Dir: Edgar Wright
Film celebrates the extraordinary legacy of art-rock oddballs Ron and Russell Mael.
According to pop folklore, John Lennon was so startled when he first saw Sparks on Top Of The Pops that he immediately called Ringo Starr, claiming: “Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler!” This is just one of countless delicious nuggets of Mael brothers mythology that Edgar Wright, the British director best known for comedy thrillers such as Shaun Of The Dead and Baby Driver, includes in this deluxe, career-spanning love letter to America’s most enduring art-pop oddballs. Did Lennon really make that call? Frankly, who cares? It is a great story. And so is this witty, mischievous, big-hearted film.
A fast-moving patchwork of archive footage, playful animation and contemporary interviews shot in tastefully crisp monochrome, it charts the rollercoaster half-century career of Ron and Russell Mael, Hollywood misfits who first scored Top 10 fame in 70s glam-era London. Their wildly eclectic career later took in Eurodisco, hard rock, electronica, cabaret and opera, plus ambitious but ultimately failed film projects.
Backing up his premise that Sparks remain hugely influential despite their spotty commercial track record, Wright gathers testimony from a stellar gallery of famous fans and friends including ex-Pistol Steve Jones, Thurston Moore, various members of New Order, Depeche
Mode, Duran Duran, and more. He also interviews key Maels collaborators including Todd Rundgren, Tony Visconti and Giorgio Moroder. Rundgren, who produced the band’s 1971 debut and is currently working with them again, says “there is some comfort in the fact that something this weird can survive that long”.
Suffused with the same arch, self-aware, antic spirit as Sparks themselves, Wright’s film plays along with the mystique that the Maels have long cultivated, just occasionally letting the mask slip to reveal small details about their parents, childhood and heavily guarded private lives. The gushingly uncritical tone and marathon two-hours-plus running time shade into self-indulgence at times. Even so, this is forgivable, partly because normal rules do not apply in Sparksworld, but mainly because Wright is a skilled filmmaker who knows how to bring a story alive with pace, wry humour, rich cultural context and snappy musical montages.
The Maels have created one of modern pop’s most unique catalogues of work, but it is the brothers themselves who arguably remain their own greatest creations: sardonic, ironic, larger-than-life living artworks. Fortunately this hugely enjoyable film is just about big enough for the both of them.
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