Earlier this month the cinetrix treated herself to a Cantabridgian double bill: Once at the Harvard Square followed by the doc Punk's Not Dead at the Brattle.
Part of the fun of finally catching up with an NPR pet like Once toward the end of the summer is the array of trailers attached to it. Hollywood is gearing up for fall seriousness, and they know you, indie watcher, are ready to go there with them.
The first three flicks I'd categorize as "Apocalypse Pretty Soon": the "Oh, shit! They poisoned LA!" paranoid stylings of Right at Your Door; Leo Di Caprio softening the blow of the scary enviro shit in The Eleventh Hour; and the more homespun trials and tribulations of The Real Dirt on Farmer John.
Then Julie Taymor tries to tell you "All You Need Is Love," but watching the one recognizable face in the Across the Universe trailer--Evan Rachel Wood's--makes me think of her "fucking" Marilyn Manson in that video while it rains blood and, well, it's back to "We're all gonna die!"
The best reaction to Goya's Ghosts is to avert one's eyes. So.
At last we arrive on the back of a train speeding through the Indian countryside. Thank God. Wes Anderson's not likely to tell us we're all gonna die. Life is a series of tableaux vivant set against wonderfully color-coordinated mise-en-scenes. Oh, yeah, and guys shaving. What's up with that? Anderson himself doesn't seem like he could grow a beard on a bet. Grad students: Get out there and write up something clever about shaving, castration anxiety, and arrested masculinity in the Anderson oeuvre, won't you?
But I meant to talk about Once. With its shaky, handheld camerawork; earnest, unfamiliar cast; and drifting, occasionally solipsistic storyline, Once resembles an Emerald Isle entry in the latest, well-documented stateside DIY movement. Call it O'Mumblecore. So much to answer for. But it's not. Not really.
For one thing, the lead characters, cutely called Guy and Girl, are not slacking post-collegians. Not only can they carry a tune, Guy works at his dad's shop and immigrant Girl picks up odd jobs to pay for the apartment she shares with her--gasp--mother and--double gasp--young child. All Hannah has to do is take the stairs. Guy and Girl live in C. Day-Lewis territory.
The Girl meets the Guy on the street while he's busking. She asks him to play his own stuff. He refuses--until they slip into a music shop where the proprietor lets her play the pianos. They make music together. He fixes her Hoover. She writes some lyrics to music he's written, gliding down streets wearing headphones and singing--like a refugee not from the Czech Republic but from the films of Jacques Demy.
Throughout Once, the crowded conditions in each of their flats keep driving the Girl and Guy outside, through the tourists in Temple Bar to the shops and quays and quieter neighborhood streets and finally into the studio, backed by some other street musicians. They make beautiful music together. They gambol on the shore. There's a misunderstanding. A bit of resignation. And the film ends--just stops--shrouded in ambiguity. Like a mumblecore flick, sure, but these two get a fookin' lot more done in a day. It's lovely.
Punk's Not Dead, the doc's title promises. But already, the apostrophe should have put you on notice that this film's version of history may be tidier than the movement it attempts to chronicle. And it does look good: there are "Never Mind the Bollocks"-style intertitles underscored with the scratchy sound of a needle reaching the end of a 45. Some amateur performance footage so raw you can feel the salt in the sweat sting your eyes. But the bulk of the archival still photos shown are familiar enough the cinetrix could have assembled them from Google given an afternoon.
The music selection is impeccable; the talking heads not so much. Often a track is playing--say the Rezillos "In a Rut"--but you get no actual Rezillos. Which is not to say all the hoary old punks are disappointing. Far from it. The cinetrix is ready to follow smirking bon mot machine Captain Sensible straight into another movie, one more worthy of pronouncements like "They're all as sober as bloody judges, and that's the tragedy." "Punks were hippies with teeth." Even "Punk should be appalling. Disgraceful."
Which probably rules out it being sponsored by Target, as the Warped Tour now is. Or sold in Hot Topic. The filmmakers have the good sense to exclude mall "punk "Avril Lavigne, but they devote plenty of time to her husband, Sum 41's Deryck Whibley. DIY platitudes coming from a guy who covered his tats in Hugo Boss to marry a pop princess? How fucking punk rock.
Which brings me back to those intertitles. Each one is garnished with a well-chosen lyric from a punk classic. But, ultimately, all they do is indicate the filmmakers' excellent taste in music. There's absolutely no connective tissue between title and text. Yeah, there are some great interviews with a bunch of old guys who are still out there doing it, and a bunch of young guys doing something like it but on a much more lucrative scale, and too much fuckin' Rollins, but there's no argument. In a documentary on punk, that's a pretty appalling oversight. One never gets any true sense of structure or a stand being taken. Is the Warped Tour cool, or is it just biting punk's style? What about the U.K. Subs? And were there really only four female punks--and Kelly Osborne--willing to be interviewed? Not a single fuckin' Go-Go even?
Are the kids alright? Got me, and the documentary never says, but you can buy a tee shirt saying Punk's Not Dead on the flick's Web site.
