|
| Synopsis
"Velvet Goldmine" is a rock opera of sorts, or as Haynes says, "a valentine to the sounds and images that erupted in and around London in the early 1970s"1. Using a non-traditional structure similar to "Citizen Kane", Haynes provides us with a glimpse of glam rock's brief flame. The film tells the story of Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), an enormously popular glam rock star loosely based on David Bowie, his relationship with his wife, Mandy Slade (Toni Collette) and his love affair with the glam rock star Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), loosely based on the personas of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, among others. The film is a combination of documentary, concert, and music video, which combine to present the film in a non-linear fashion, an 'experience' movie. The film's main structure is provided by a reporter's search for the truth about the enigmatic Brian Slade. The reporter is Arthur Stuart, played by Christian Bale. During his search for Slade, Arthur is forced to relive his both painful and liberatory adolescent relationship with glam rock in Britain. We learn that after a brief career of explosive popularity, Slade stages a fake assassination of himself during one of his concerts. The stunt backfires, Slades record sales plummet, and he retreats into cocaine use, never to be heard from again. Although Stuart's search for Slade provides us with the main structure of the film, we really never learn what happened to Brian Slade, and are only presented with the possibility that he has transformed himself into a new marketable rock star commodity for the 1980s.
During Stuart's search, however, we are provided with a glimpse into the world of glam rock. Slade is shown as being ultimately a construct, transformed by an ambitious record agent into a popular rock star. He is invented by his record company, and soon rises to fame as a part of the brief English phenomenon of glam rock. His story is told through a combination of television documentary, newspaper style commentaries, behind the scenes rock documentary camera styles, and surrealistic music videos. All of these styles combine to present the viewer with a blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, rather than a straightforward presentation of what actually occurred. Although married, Slade and Mandy have an open relationship, and are both openly bisexual. The rocker Curt Wild enters Slade's life, and he falls in love. Wild, based around fantasies of Iggy Pop, goes to England to record with Slade, and the two men are marketed "like a pair of 40s starlets, a Spencer and Tracy for the 70s"2. However, the two men's love affair soon turns sour and Wild leaves Slade. Slade, despondent, plans his assassination in order to get himself out of his current tour, and afterwards, slips into drug abuse and depression. Soon after, glam rock itself dies out. All the while we are also presented with Arthur Stuart's experience of glam rock as a teenager in England. Alienated from his peers and parents for being queer and having an affinity for glam rock, Arthur eventually leaves his parents house for London, where he has various exploits with glam rock stars. Now, however, Stuart is a reporter in a bleak, Orwellian 1984 New York, and can only look back on his glam rock days with sentimentality.
|
|
|
|
|
| 
*Sorry for the red blocks but i don't want to offend anyone. Casting
Curt Wild--Ewan McGregor
Brian Slade--Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Mandy Slade--Toni Collette
Arthur Stuart--Christian Bale
Jerry Divine--Eddie Izzard
Shannon--Emily Woof
Cecil--Michael Feast
Producer--Christine Vachon
Executive Producers--Scott Meek, Michael Stipe
Executive producer for Single Cell--Sandy Stern
Co-executive producers--Chris J. Ball, William Tyer
Co-producer--Olivia Stewart
Directed, written by Todd Haynes
Story by Haynes, James Lyons
|
|
|
|
|
| 
|
|
|