Great movie; DVD not so great. | Absolute Beginners

4 stars for the music but 1 for the movie | Absolute Beginners | Patsy Kensit, Eddie O'Connell

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	• Absolute Beginners Patsy Kensit, Eddie O'Connell MGM (Video & DVD), 2000 average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Absolute entertainment

This year I had the opportunity to read both Absolute Beginners and City of Spades, both by Colin MacInnes. Both deal with racial tension in London. I was surprized to find this DVD where the novel Absolute Beginners had been made into a film. I was even more surprized when I watched this ambitious, slightly flawed, but creative brave product.

Eddie O'Connell and Patshy Kensit are beautiful as Colin the 19 year old photographer, and Crepe Suzette, his dress designer girlfriend. Both have superb dance numbers.

The art direction was exceptional with some of the most creative sets to be seen in years on the screen. It appeared that Kenny Scharf and Rodney Allen Greenblatt had designed all the club interiors in the film. The costumes were over the top. The choreography was exceptional since it had to convey the chaos and violence of race riots in dance form. It reminded me of the gang fight scenes in West Side Story, only more violent and less stylized.

David Bowie plays both a dramatic role and sings one of the songs in this musical. Sade however takes the prize with "Killer Blow" sung in a nightclub. The scene of Sade singing is worth the price of the DVD. Other bands play in the film, including Fine Young Cannibals. Ray Davies (looking very good) of the Kinks plays Colin's father, a content and handsome middle aged man with a nympho wife who has sex with the male boarders in their boarding house.

The film is a conglomeration of diverse influences from various times and eras. From West Side Story to the work of Charles Mingus, you will find great entertainment watching the various iterations of these influences flow across the screen.

Yet, underlying the vast visual and musical display is a subplot about racial tension and disruption. The film conveys the message that a lively mixture of influences from a range of human cultures stimulates and enlivens the human soul. Likewise, efforts to suppress and destroy others because of race, ethnicity, and religion is counterproductive and damaging in the long run to the human condition.

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Great movie; DVD not so great.

One of the things I loved about this movie was the set design and costumes, all in spectacular colors. However, the color in this MGM-released DVD wobbles from vivid to washed-out and back to vivid, often during the same scene. Pretty disappointing -- what I might expect from a 2nd-generation VHS copy, but not a DVD.

4 stars for the music but 1 for the movie

I've had the soundtrack to this movie for years, the double album no less. It is an absolute masterpiece. The movie is a bit of a let down after finally seeing it. If you think of this movie as a series of interconnecting vignettes it works much better as the plot is very convoluted and meandering.
The final riot seems out of place, but is very effective with our hero caught in the middle of a race riot, running from both the neo-nazis and the angry blacks, having no safe place to go. Jerry Dammer's music during the whole episode is outstanding.
In the end there is some substance with it's strong anti-capitalist message and even more style with the series of music videos, but empty nonetheless.
David Bowie is the class of the field here. Sleek, stylish and somehow menacing.
James Fox is understated and uncaring as the greedy heavy. Everyone else is a step below. Many over-act or just don't have the chops.
There are a number of pretty standard "characters". There's the hip beatnik type with the always-hip sunglasses, the good-natured gay "Oscar Wilde" type with the always-hip sunglasses and the ultra cool black trumpet player (not a sax?) with the always-hip sunglasses. There is also a street urchin type who's lust for money, it turns out, hides a darker side and a good natured, busty, and big boned lesbian pseudo mother type.
All businessmen & women are portrayed as corrupt bungling money-grubbing capitalists, who are intent on turning the hero's poor tenement neighborhood into an ultramodern "white" housing project.
The show business types are fake, toupee wearing liars. Come to think of it, in my limited experience that's not far from the truth.
There's even an old schoolmaster type who seems completely lost (surprise, surprise).
Many of the actors and artists have a problem keeping up with the words during their lip-syncing (though Bowie makes it look effortless). You'd think in a major motion picture there would be more of an effort to make that work.
Of course the real star of the movie is the music and the standouts are Gil Evans, the aforementioned Jerry Dammers and David Bowie. Honorable mentions go to Working Week (Rodrigo Bay doesn't get much airtime but is an exhilarating song) and Style Council reworking their "With Everything to Lose" as "Have You Ever Had It Blue" with added horns and Latin beats (though it seems out of place here). Slim Gaillard's "Selling Out" Clive Langer's "Napoli" Smiley Culture's "So What?" all work wonders with or without the movie.

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Fabsolutely Abulous

Absolute Beginners was released in 1986, but it harkens back to those halcyon days of 1958, when England was shaking off its drab shades of grey, gray, and greyer, and embracing more vibrant colors and the power of youth. The Musical is based on the novel of the same name by Colin MacInnes. Colin is also the name of the photographer/narrator (Eddie O'Connell), who is the protagonist. As the film opens, he explains in voice-over his ambition to capture the ethereal blossoms on film before they wither or are rendered in plastic.

This film was an attempt to capture the ethereal blossoms, too, but too late--it was more of a rendering in plastic. Not that this musical is without charm, it is loaded with it--but it tries to tackle several serious issues but ends up biting off more than it can chew.

In some ways it is like West Side Story, with its theme of racial tension among youth gangs, but the music is a mish mash of various styles, all likeable enough, but failing to coalesce into a single unified vision, as it did with Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim. This film actually has Gil Evans, whose work with Miles Davis stands out, but here his talents are wasted. I imagine that is his arrangement of Charles Mingus' Boogie Stop Shuffle, and Better Git it in Your Soul, but they don't really add anything to the original. We also have a great dance number with Colin and the sinister Vendice Partners (David Bowie) tap-dancing on a giant type writer, and a charming ditty sung by Arthur, Collin's dad (Ray Davies). Did I mention the dance number where Suzette (Patsy Kensit) takes over the fashion runway, or where she sings in Chez Nobody a la Miss Peggy Lee's Fever, to the accompaniment of finger snaps? There is also a great party sequence featuring Slim Gaillard of Slim & Slam fame (Fast Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy) and another club sequence where Sade sings. In the party sequence Dido Lament, Gossip Columnist (Anita Morris) straps a cocktail shaker onto her high heel, hops on the bar, and mixes a martini with her leg while lounging on her back. I was not only shaken, but also stirred.

After West Side Story, I would compare the musical Absolute Beginners to Clockwork Orange, but that film used its music--Beethoven and other classical numbers--in a much more innovative way that supported the story, the action, and was the one redeeming quality of its teen age thug protagonist, Alexander De Large.

If this movie had been done with Paul Weller of The Jam, I think we would have had a much more interesting film experience. He was inspired by the book, Absolute Beginners, to write a song with that title. Even though he belongs more to the 80's, when the film was made, then the late 50's, the period it tries to capture, his music was retro, nostalgic for the days of The Who, and also the soul and R&B that would support the theme of racial tension.

The director, Julien Temple, also directed The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, along with a lot of videos and music-related projects. There is a song here by Tenpole Tudor, as Ed the Ted, that doesn't really relate to the rest of the story, but like his song in Swindle, is charming nonetheless. Not being up on English teen culture as much as I thought I was, weren't there riots between Teds and Mods, or Mods and Rockers? Ringo Starr was asked if he was a Mod or a Rocker, and he said he was a Mocker. In this film there is a stand off between Mods and Trads. Modern Jazz versus Trad Jazz? Who knew the Brits took that so serious.

To me it was interesting to see James Fox in his role as Henley of Mayfair, Dressmaker to the Queen. I wondered what had happened to him. Fox dropped out of the acting profession for nine years (1970-79) after he filmed Performance (1970) with Mick Jagger. A combination of his father's recent death, the strain of filming and smoking the hallucinogen DMT with Mick Jagger led to a nervous breakdown. Fox subsequently joined a religious organization known as "The Navigators" which is similar to the Gideons and is closely associated with the ministry of Billy Graham. He published a book, "Comeback: An Actor's Direction", in 1983.

[On his 9-year break from acting]: People think Performance (1970) blew my mind... my mind was blown long before that.

Performance (1970) gave me doubts about my way of life. Before that I had been completely involved in the more bawdy side of the film business. But after that everything changed.

To sum it up: This movie is a musical adaptation of the book Absolute Beginners set in 1958. The themes are the emerging youth explosion, the baby boom, and its cultural ramifications. The creativity and energy of youth is co-opted, exploited, and used to sell useless products. The low rent ghetto, haven for artists and other demimondes, is torn down by greedy developers to make way for housing projects, and neo-fascist thugs are used to threaten and harass the inhabitants into moving. These are serious subjects, but then, the fights are all choreographed into dance numbers, making the whole thing seem very silly and trivial. But this is a musical, so what are you going to do? two, three, four, and jazz hands!

Absolute Beginners (Absolute Classics): The book upon which the musical is based.

Compact Snap: The Jam have a cool song based on the book, titled Absolute Beginners. I like to imagine this project done by Paul Weller, along with Gil Evans. Sound Affects. The Jam song in question is here, along with lots of other Jam gems.

A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess was inspired to write the book after hearing about plans to "cure" violent youth with electric shock or other extreme therapy in the wake of the Mod/Ted riots. There is a scene where Collin visits home, only to find his room rented out to an uncouth lodger that is very similar. Other parallels also.

West Side Story: This musical set new standards and revolutionized the entire musical form. A classic masterpiece. Absolute Beginners wishes it was one-tenth of West Side Story.

Mingus Ah Um: There are two great numbers here that are used in the movie. The Mingus versions sound the best, but the movie looks better. Great dance numbers.

The Man Who Fell to Earth: This is the best translation of the "Cracked Actor" into the film medium. Bowie's best film performance.

Performance: This is the film that James Fox was in that, along with other factors, caused him to quit acting for nine years. Here, he plays a gangster on the lam, hiding out with a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger). Great music by Ry Cooder and The Rolling Stones.

Great Rock N Roll Swindle: Julien Temple directed this recap of The Sex Pistols told from the point of view of manager Malcolm McLarren, taking all credit for the whole punk rock movement.

Comeback: An Actor's Direction: Book by James Fox about his acting hiatus. Probably out of print.

Velvet Goldmine: Just threw in one last random comparison of another rock musical that is vaguely similar. You can have ten, so this is the tenth. Absolute Beginners is much better than at least this one.

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Colin is a brazen 19-year-old with his finger on the pulse of Soho's burgeoning scene of artists. But when his beautiful girlfriend Suzette tires of their poor and struggling existence, Colin finds himself losing touch with himself and her. And when an older, richer man sweeps Suzette away, a devastated Colin embarks on a desperate journey to win her back!

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