music

Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Director: Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi, USA, 2007): Documenting the band Acrassicauda in Heavy Metal in Baghdad was a “risky, dangerous, and really fucking stupid” undertaking, according to journalist Suroosh Alvi, and those words are certainly descriptive enough for this film. I was expecting a relatively light-hearted, fun and even novel documentary on the only heavy metal band in Baghdad. And yes, there are more than a few “light” moments, but this is a sober and emotional blow to the head of the reality of what is happening in Iraq as seen through the eyes of people just like me: regular, working class guys who are also passionate about music. And it’s nothing like you’ve ever seen on the news.

The filmmakers’ involvement with Acrassicauda began in 2003, when VICE Magazine ran a short piece on them. What followed was a gig set up by VICE two years later, which marked the band’s final performance in Baghdad. After that gig, the band members weren’t heard from again, until a year later when Alvi and Moretti traveled to Baghdad to “see if they were still alive”. This is where the film takes a turn from an already atypical band bio to a “meeting the band” that you have never experienced before (thankfully without the airplane nosedive). Firas, the band’s bassist, plays tour guide for a few days as Alvi and Moretti document both a country and a band that war has torn apart. What follows is a journey through the streets of Iraq, with bulletproof SUVs and a slew of armed bodyguards as company.

As they talk, we learn a lot about these men — about their fears, hopes and dreams. They want to have families. They want to wear their Metallica and Slipknot t-shirts, grow their hair long and have goatees, but any of these things could get them shot, even if they are walking outside before the 9pm curfew. They want to headbang without the fear of being mistaken as Jews in prayer, and killed. They want to flee Baghdad and live in freedom, but they don’t want to leave their families behind or be alienated elsewhere. They want to, as the band’s friend Mike puts it, “fly and be free.” But most of all, they want to rock — but how can you do that in a country with a government legislature banning “music-filled parties and all kinds of singing”?

With titles like “Massacre,” “Between The Ashes” and “Under World,” Acrassicauda’s songs seem to be typical of many a metal band’s; the sad truth, however, is that these titles are completely literal, and their lyrics describe the reality of their world. After seeing things through the eyes of these men (both the filmmakers and the band members), who are really not so unlike me and my friends, I feel much closer to understanding what is really going on over there. I am a music lover, and this angle (for lack of a better word) was extremely effective and emotionally stirring. Watching this film was a very sobering experience, and it will surely stick with me for a long time.

Official Site (with trailer)

NOTE: I saw this film at a pre-festival press screening at Bovine Sex Club.

UPDATE 9/21/07: The band members are in danger of being deported from their temporary safe haven in Syria. Click here to donate to help them reach a safe destination.

Tagged as: Documentaries, iraq, music, TIFF

Control (Director: Anton Corbijn, UK/USA, 2007): My fears about this one were mostly justified. Anton Corbijn began his career as a rock photographer and is perhaps best known for shooting the covers of U2’s albums. From there he moved into directing music videos before taking on this film as his feature debut. Corbijn has crafted a pretty conventional biopic about the life of Joy Division’s singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide by hanging himself on the eve of the group’s first US tour in 1980. All of the formative moments are checked off: Ian as glam-loving teenager singing in front of a mirror, Ian meeting and marrying his wife Debbie, upon whose memoir (Touching From a Distance) the film is based, Ian’s first epileptic seizure, Ian’s affair with Belgian groupie Annik Honoré (played by an impossibly gorgeous Alexandra Maria Lara). As with most biopics, time is compressed to a ridiculous extent, making it difficult to feel any depth in particular scenes before we’re rushed off to the next major event. As well, Corbijn films in black and white, and instead of making late 70s Macclesfield look like the grim industrial suburb it was, he almost makes it look pretty. In the same way, he photographs Curtis (played ably by young Sam Riley) like the rock photographer he can’t leave behind. Samantha Morton does a fine job of portraying the forgotten wife, but given that she was hardly acknowledged by the members of the band, it’s hard to trust much of the script, which must by nature deal in speculation.

However, the actors portraying the band members played all their own music, and did a wonderful job. And the film drove me back immediately to listen to my Joy Division records, which must mean something worked. I thought the scenes leading up to Curtis’ death were handled sensitively as well. But perhaps my favourite moment was one of the lightest. The presence of John Cooper Clarke (playing John Cooper Clarke!) performing his inimitable spoken word piece “Evidently Chickentown” made me long for the days when someone like Clarke could open for a band as “dark” as Joy Division.

Curtis’ story reminded me vividly of another reluctant rock star. Someone hungry for fame but then disdainful when it arrived. Someone who married and had a child only to doubt his abilities as a husband and father. Someone who struggled with health issues to the point of despair. Yes, I think if there is an afterlife, Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain are sharing a cigarette somewhere.

Trailer
Official Site

(8/10)

NOTE: I saw this film before the film festival started at a special press screening. I’ve actually revised my numerical rating upward in the days since I first saw the film.

UPDATE: The film opens in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on October 23rd.

Tagged as: music, suicide, TIFF

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Nightclubbing (Directors: Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers, USA, 1975-1980): After seeing Wasted Orient (review), I’d planned to leave the NFB Cinema to see Kurt Cobain: About A Son, but when I found out what the next screening was, I immediately changed my plans. Directors Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers have documented more than 100 bands from the New York punk and No Wave scenes from 1975-1980. They videotaped shows for broadcast on a cable access programme called Nightclubbing and the film is a rough assemblage of 25 performances from that archive. They’re working on a documentary which will incorporate present-day interviews with many musicians from the scene, and we got to see a short excerpt from that after their Q&A. Since they’ve been touring this particular collection of clips since at least 2000, I hope we’ll see a DVD release before the end of the decade.

I’ll start by stating the obvious. The video and audio quality of these clips is horrendous. Many were captured on primitive equipment and were never meant to be preserved. That being said, it’s mesmerizing to witness some of these early performances, most of which were filmed at either the late, lamented CBGB’s or at the Danceteria. Here are just a few highlights:

• a three-piece Talking Heads performing “Psycho Killer” in December 1975, well before the song was recorded.
• a 1980 clip of Pylon, whom I’d never heard of before. Conservatively-dressed singer Vanessa Ellison’s performance builds from a near-whisper to a sort of twitchy crescendo. Fascinating.
• a 1979 clip of the Bad Brains covering Wire’s “12XU”.
• Iggy Pop singing “New Values” in 1979. Unfortunately, the vocals are buried, but Iggy does some of his trademark stage moves.
• The Dead Boys performing with Divine at a benefit for their drummer, who had been stabbed in a knife fight and who had no medical insurance.
• a very early Blondie performance of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” from 1975.
• there really was quite a bit of saxophone in many of these bands, for better or worse. This brought home the joke behind L.A. hardcore band Fear’s song “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones”.
• a 1980 spoken-word performance by Max Blagg about the evils of heroin, which had ravaged the scene by this time.

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s book Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk has been one of my favourite books for a long time now, and seeing these clips really added another dimension to that whole fascinating story.

The only drawback to my viewing experience was that I was sitting next to two old rockers who talked loudly thoughout both the film and the Q&A afterward. So, for me it was just like being at a real rock show in that sense.

The directors conducted a very informal Q&A afterward, and you can just tell they have a million stories they want to share. I hope the finished form of this film can pack even a few of them in.

A review of a screening from 2000.

(8/10)

Tagged as: Documentaries, music, nxne, Toronto Film Festivals

Wasted Orient (Director: Kevin Fritz, USA, 2006): I’d seen the trailer for this on distributor Plexifilm’s site a few weeks ago and was really happy to be able to attend the film’s first Canadian screening. Joyside are a Chinese punk band based in Beijing and the film follows them on their first tour. This being China, the band starts with a 15-hour train ride to Guangzhou in the south of the country, and the long journey gives them plenty of time to drink. Drinking seems to be the constant in the film, and one gets the impression that anything more illicit than beer and gin may be simply out of their financial reach. Despite their constant state of intoxication and their aversion to bathing, the band are actually a likeable bunch of guys who are relatively proficient musicians. They name-check, either in interviews or by playing covers, many of the early punk bands and personalities from New York: The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Johnny Thunders (It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Chinese Rock”). And these guys are punk in that early, primitive sense: they’re nihilistic, but they’re not mean, or political. They just don’t see the point in pursuing the lives their parents or polite society would prefer for them. In that sense, they’re not much different from their idols. But, of course, this is China.

Other critics (mostly Americans, I suspect) have played up the “Communist” angle, with variations on “Rockin’ in the Unfree World” and that sort of nonsense. The truth is that modern China may be more capitalist than North America, and what Joyside is rejecting seems to be materialism and the appearance of success more than anything else.

The film is very raw, and one or two people in the small audience (maybe 20 people) found it a bit too much and left. But I was riveted. Kevin Fritz has lived in China for several years, and got to know the band very well, so he has really captured a level of intimacy that hardly seems possible for an “outsider.” The beer helps, though, as in scenes where he features each band member in a drunken one-on-one with the camera. A bit surprisingly, each comes across as touchingly earnest and even a bit maudlin.

Despite the endless beer guzzling, the pissing and vomiting, the rude gestures and the poses of despair, these are just four young guys trying to make sense of their circumstances. It doesn’t hurt that they can rock out, too.

Official site for the film

(7/10)

Tagged as: china, Documentaries, music, nxne

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