Riding into the sun
Thrillingly immersive documentary mirrors the Velvets’ questing spirit, says Manish Agarwal.
“A standard was set, for how to be elegant and how to be brutal.” JOHN CALE
ABELOVED AUTEUR making a feature documentary about their favourite group is no guarantee of cinema gold – see Gimme Danger (2016), Jim Jarmusch’s functional, pedestrian profile of The Stooges – but there’s no director better suited to chronicling The Velvet Underground than Todd Haynes. Iconic musicians have informed Haynes’ dramatic work since his still startling 1987 student short Superstar, which used Barbie dolls to tell Karen Carpenter’s heartbreaking stor y, through to 2007’s nonlinear Dylan deconstruction I’m Not There, via his 1998 cult classic Velvet Goldmine. That movie’s glam-Citizen Kane riff on Bowie and Iggy mythology captures its subjects’ essence thanks to its wildly imaginative vision, the precise opposite of an officially sanctioned biopic.
The Velvet Underground is neither fiction nor unauthorised. Its meticulously composed two hours use a chronological structure and entwine archival treasure with present day recollections. And that’s where the similarities with standard rock docs end. Haynes ensures that the trailblazing sonics are matched by his visual language: a mesmerising, constantly shifting tapestry of rare clips, stills and illustrative experimental fragments most often presented in split screen. The results are mind-melting, most notably an extended montage for Heroin which giddily replicates the song’s illicit, spike-into-vein rush.
The film’s first third contextualises its primary forces: Lou Reed, John Cale and New York’s febrile artistic community in the 1960s. Haynes spotlights Reed’s sexuality, balancing Lou’s assertion that his parents consented to him receiving electroconvulsive therapy in order to “shock the gayness” out of him with his psychotherapist sister Merrill’s exasperated refutation of this claim. Brilliant yet troubled, the singer/guitarist’s trip through teenage doo wop 45s, college bar bands and staff songwriter gig at budget label Pickwick is paralleled by viola prodigy Cale’s journey from the Welsh valleys to the piano-smashing heart of Manhattan’s modern classical scene, where he’s mentored by minimalists La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela.
Resplendent in cut-off denim, the drone duo are among a roll call of interviewees including the late
Jonas Mekas, the godfather of American avant-garde cinema
(to whom this doc is dedicated); Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison’s widow Martha; Nico paramour Jackson Browne, who opened for the group during his Greenwich Village days; and film critic Amy Taubin, a participant in
Andy Warhol’s multimedia adventures at The Factor y. Contributors are either a collaborator or first-hand witness, from Warhol superstar and Velvets dancer Mary Woronov to manager and publicist
Danny Fields.
Surviving members Cale and Moe Tucker offer the sharpest insights into their synthesis of disparate pop and noise elements, the bassist highlighting its pathfinding duality: “A standard was set, for how to be elegant and how to be brutal.” The drummer comes into her own in a bravura mid-section as the Nico-augmented quartet take on California hippydom: “You cannot change minds by handing a flower to some bozo who wants to shoot you.”
The final act details a gradual disintegration following 1968’s fierce second album White
Light/White Heat, contrasting Cale and Morrison’s sad departures with the first inklings of their seismic future impact via the testimony of Boston and Provincetown concert attendees Jonathan Richman and John Waters. Haynes avoids any clichéd discussion of their enduring influence, wrapping up instead with another hypnotic visual flourish that culminates in a disarming piece of candid footage you’ll want to experience unspoiled.