It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983)

Jack Celliers: "What a funny face. Beautiful eyes..."

There are a number of reasons I didn't watch this to write a review last time I rewatched all my Bowie movies.  The biggest being: this film is brutal.  

Before I put it on again I ran through, in my mind, all the other prisoner of war movies I'd watched. I decided A Town Like Alice was worse because of the crucifixtion.  Upon watching Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, I've revised that opinion. A Town Like Alice is a hard watch but it offers you something, right at the end; redemption. Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence offers no such concessions. It is an unflinching, critical, damning representation of war.

Everyone is brutalised. Everyone loses their minds. Everyone is lesser for war.  Everyone loses.

Against such a backdrop it feels almost trite to talk about the acting. But I will plough on regardless.

David Bowie isn't the star of the show. The stars, the backs upon whom the movie is carried, are Hara and the titular Lawrence. But I do think Bowie is perfectly cast for the repressed, guilty, self-destrcutive, honorable, uncompromising, Celliers. He is a madman in a world of manmen so it doesn't show. He is flamboyantly and quietly resistant.  I think it may be the best cast and best acted of all of Bowie's roles. Save, perhaps, for Labyrinth.

I understand Bowie was cast on the strength of his performance in The Elephant Man, which I feel gives him a quiet confidence in his abilties. Even the mime scene (because there has to be a bit of Bowie in there somewhere) is appropriate, proportional.  Bowie's character's death loses none of its horror with time. Again, I think Bowie acts those scenes of his 'crime' and death exceptionaly well. Blunt, almost numb. But direct.  I remember distinctly the first time I watched this movie I was in absolute disbelief that they could kill David Bowie, of all people, off so easily.  Some roundabout irony there, perhaps, to my reaction just 2 weeks ago.

The dud note - and again it seems there must always be one of those - is, for me, the decision to use the 36 year old Bowie to play his past 16 or 17 year old self.  Yes, this is Bowie - no, he does not look 36. But does he look 17? Not on your life. The whole flashback section is badly done but it does provide a visual relief from the desaturated nightmare that is the POW camp.  Finally, there's the lingering inconsistency of Celliers being Australian by birth and upbringing, along with a dodgy but not overdone accent up to the age of 17. And then the adult Celliers we meet at the beginning of the film apparently being cockney and in the British army, despite wearing an Australian army hat. BUT ANYWAY.

I must look up Bowie's comments on this role because it is such a big departure from what came before (although perhaps Celliers resignation to his fate does echo that of Thomas Jerome Newton) and it is, in my opinion, such a close study. I'd be interested too, to know what interaction if any he had with fellow actor and musician Ryúichi Sakamoto, who wrote the film's beautiful score.

All in all? A carefully made, and heart wrenchingly direct representation of life at a POW camp. This film is hard going, but Bowie and more make it worthwhile.

Just a Gigolo (1978)

Cilly: "They used to call me the child prodigy of the revolution, but the revolution was a little slow in coming so I moved on."
Paul: "Yes, that seems to be my problem"

Judging by the section on reception on wikipedia, the score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the summing up on Film 4, I might be the only person in the world who likes this film.

I'm not sure why.  It's funny!  It's a really quiet, dry, funny, but funny all the same.   For crying out loud, David Bowie is carrying a pig around, arguing with people about whether or not he is dead for the first 20 minutes! 

Some reviews suggest the film couldn't decide what it was but I think it knows quite well. It's a black comedy on the interwar period in Berlin; capturing the listlessness and vague sense of fatalism which inflected the actions and spirit of Berliners at the time.  Perhaps it's because it so quickly reminded me of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin that I was so open to it.  It also evoked something of Jason Lute's City of Stones for me.  And, of course, Cabaret; fundamentally different from Cabaret of course, but it felt like you had walked round the corner from Sally Bowles' club and stumbled on a whole new story.  Whatever the cause of my susceptibility, I enjoyed it.  

I liked that it was broadly pessimistic. Such subject matter must be bleak.  And that bleakness comes through in the slightly anarchic, offbeat style.  

I liked that it poked fun at the Nazis as disorganised and stupid.  I liked the quiet, wry comment of the conclusion. I liked that Bowie's character was vaguely tragic and also utterly self-indulgent. I liked it.

As I said in my last post, all David Bowie movies need a bit of sex, lingering shots of his delicate features, and an off beat character.  Based on that criteria alone, it is a roaring success.  There are issues though. Marlene Dietrich's refusal to return to Berlin, filming all her shots in Paris and then having them pasted into the film, actually shows. There are bizarre pauses in the 'conversation' between her and Bowie when she recruits him as a gigolo.  And, frankly, there isn't enough sex. In fact, the idea Bowie really is a gigolo is something of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it plot point. It's all a nod and a wink instead of a fumble and a gasp. 

All in all, I thought it rather fun, rather knowing, rather silly and rather wonderful.

What to say on such a sad day?

How to put into words the depth of a loss which affects no material change in my social circle? How to express all the things that stranger, that alien, that musician, that performer, that extraordinary star meant to me?

I woke up to text messages asking me if I was ok. Their sources were diverse enough that I knew it was not a relation. So I ran through the options in my head; Nicky Wire? David Bowie? David Bowie.  David Bowie.

Open twitter to read what I already knew in the pit of my stomach.  And laugh at the absurdity. David Bowie clearly cannot die.  How ridiculous. I spent all weekend listening to the new album. Nobody who made something so vital could possibly die. How ridiculous. Spent the weekend thinking about how Blackstar was like, and unlike Outside. Mulling over the imagery in Lazarus.

Got in the shower. Lost my breath to wracking sobs. Can't be true, is true, can't be true, is true.

BBC News channel, the only place to go when the world turns upside down. Is true is true.

But, united. The whole of my twitter timeline, text messages, messenger keeps pinging, all of my facebook feed.  All united. Saying "surely not? He means too much to us all.".

At first I couldn't understand why his illness had been kept secret, but it is better this way. We'd have mourned him for a year and a half whilst he was still here. Brutal though today has been, it's clean. 

_ _ _ _ _ _


David Bowie pre-dates the Manics, as my obsessions go.  Like the rest of my generation I met him in Labyrinth. But I'd always known his songs; I remember playing with space station Lego, singing Space Oddity to myself, over and over again when I was 4 or so. But it came together in 2002, I bought Heathen after a rave review in Q and added it to Hunky Dory of my shelf. For 3 months in 2005 I listened to nothing but The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  I waxed lyrical about his acting skill, and his dick, to a friend, when I got thrown out of a party for being too drunk and made him watch The Man Who Fell to Earth with me.  I went to Berlin with Station to Station and The Next Day in 2013.

I saw him live, his last UK show, in 2004 at the Isle of Wight Festival.  It was beautiful.  Perfect, actually.  He came on after England lost at football in some competition or other. Made a quip about sharing his initials with David Beckham. Launched into his set.  Turned around the mood.  Turned around the festival.  The sun went down as he played and when he went off stage, at the end, the woman near me shouted "we'll scream until the sun comes up".  As we walked back to the campsite there was a buzz.  People babbled in disbelief at what and who they had seen. I overhead two lads talking; "we saw him! The Thin White Duke! I can't believe we saw him!".  

I can't believe I saw him.

I knew I was not straight when I was young, perhaps 14 when it started to come into focus for me.  I remember asking my Mum, when I was 16 or so, if she liked Bowie.  She said "I did, until he said he was bisexual and then I went off him". And I remember that going to my very soul.  Bowie was with me, my Mum was not.  I clung to him. Immersed myself in Bowie's otherness.  I was sure my Mum would go off me, just like she had Bowie, when she knew the truth of me.  When I finally came out to my Mum it was with reference to that conversation; "would you hate me if I was bisexual?".

She didn't hate me.  She doesn't hate Bowie any more either. She told me today the news hit her like a punch to the stomach.  I think my sexuality and feeling accepted, and my Mum's feelings about Bowie will always be all tied up together for me.  

When I started reading autobiographies I felt a new sense of connection.  His brother had schizophrenia, before his sad death.  And that shaped who Bowie became and how he moved through life. A few people quote him as saying he feared he would lose his mind.  I know that fear. I am shaped by that fear.  Nobody who has stood so close to madness, to schizophrenia, can feel anything else.  My brother lost his mind when I was 11.  And then again, and again.  And by the time I was 16, perhaps earlier, I had no greater fear than losing my mind.  Still don't.

I took comfort in knowing Bowie shared that.  It changes you. It pushes you on.  

How far can you push yourself before you do? How does the free-wheeling, top of the roller-coaster moment feel? Who else can you be? Why be one person? If you have nothing to lose but yourself then it's time to let go of that tight grip of who you are and explore everyone you could be.

And look what happens when you let go, look what happens when you reinvent yourself, casting off each shell as you outgrow it. 

So he can't be gone, can he? It's just the latest reinvention.

Cracked Actor (1975)

I wasn't originally going to include Cracked Actor in my rewatch because I was sticking to cinematic releases but then I found out there was going to be a showing at the V&A with a Q&A with Alan Yentob (the director).  I also didn't plan to go the the screening, but after a farcically bad Friday I impulse bought train tickets and screening ticket and hoped on the next train to London.

After a brief introduction from the V&As head of Adult Learning which included frequent uses of "amazing" and Alan Yentob very quickly telling us how the film came to be made, the lights went down and the film went up.

I've seen Cracked Actor before - once on YouTube a few years ago, and once on BBC1 - on Thursday night! In both previous viewings I was struck by Bowie's isolation and incoherence, I expected to experience this viewing in the same way, but something Yentob said before we began niggled; he told us that this was his second ever film, his first had been taking a "very genial actor" and making a satirical documentary about him which treated him as a Very Serious Actor and Artiste.  Yentob told us that Bowie had seen this and requested Yentob as his filmmaker.  Could it be, I wondered, that this documentary, held up as [at least part] inspiration for This Is Spinal Tap have been the original mockumentary?  Bowie has always been in control of his image and how he is represented and until now, Cracked Actor seemed a peculiar exception but what if he recognised his bizarre life, and own mental state for what it was, and gave Yentob only what he chose to?  

For the first time, Bowie's comments on the fly in his milk, and being in the back of an accelerating car, seemed both honest, coherent, and wilfully pretentious.  I'm still on the fence about the intention - and self-awareness - behind the wax museum comments, but my third viewing of Cracked Actor left me with a decidedly different impression of that time.  Remember too, that despite ingesting an enormous amount of cocaine in this period, Bowie still managed to make Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, and most - if not all - of Low, as well as acting so wonderfully in The Man Who Fell to Earth.  He was nothing, if not functional.

The Q&A was introduced by the 'David Bowie Is' exhibition's curator, the lucky bugger who got to physically enter David Bowie's personal archive and see all that stuff*.  We learnt from Yentob that the scene early in the film of David having a cast made of his face was something that he asked David to do.  He says that Bowie agreeing to do it showed that he trusted him and then banged on about it so much that I began to feel very uncomfortable with it - it was as though Yentob required Bowie to prostrate himself to Yentob as God/Messiah/Filmmaker before Yentob would make the film.  Given Bowie was being roundly ripped off by his manager at the time, it felt a little like Yentob was cheerfully positioning himself as yet another controlling force in Bowie's life at that time.  The fact Yentob continually called David Bowie, 'Bowie' and not 'David', as one would expect of someone who was supposedly friends with, and in a position of trust with the man for 6 months, and generally came across as an arrogant prick makes me feel very disinclined to believe he was quite so genial and passive in his filmmaking as you might imagine.

There were a number of questions from the audience that Yentob completely failed to answer, preferring instead to tell us a meandering story which allowed him to name drop some more (did you know he was good friends with Kubrick? Mick Jagger? Duncan Jones? Kate Moss? Nick Roeg? etc etc).  A few interesting facts that did emerge were that, in the scene where Bowie is singing along to Aretha Franklin in the back of the limo, the girl sitting on the floor in front of him is Coco Schwab! I was surprised, she didn't look at all like I imagined.  It also adds more fuel to my little fire of "Bowie was not as isolated or out of control as he looks" because Coco has been a constant and loyal companion with, everyone agrees, great integrity.

As many people know, Cracked Actor was to be called "The Collector" but Yentob felt by the time of release - and indeed even during filming - that Cracked Actor was more appropriate.  Interestingly, Bowie has since spoken of watching that documentary to remember a period that's a little hazy to him.  More interestingly still, Yentob suggested that Bowie was planning, during that period, to disentangle himself from manager and management company and was consciously choosing to document this period - to collect his own history and moment just as it was ending.  The very existence of the 'David Bowie Is' exhibition is evidence of Bowie's own self-archiving and the rarity of rock-umentaries at this time does lend credence to the idea that Bowie was up to something deliberate in asking for the documentary be made.

I know some people speculated on twitter on Thursday that footage of the entire concert at the Universal City Amphitheatre exists in the BBC archive, Yentob, sadly, confirmed this was not the case.  He said he went looking for it some years ago and it's either been deleted or stolen.  Hopefully, it was rescued from deletion by a light fingered Bowie-fan archive-worker and still exists out there somewhere!

I'd really like to see Cracked Actor a fourth time now, no doubt it is still available on YouTube so I will be able, but I'll give it some time to let the above reflections sink in.  If you haven't seen it, it is a fascinating film of its moment - however you feel about Bowie - and worth a watch.  If you have seen it, I'd love to know what you think about the new (to me) angles and considerations of Yentob's apparent attempts to exert control over Bowie, and Bowie's role in the film being made.



*Apparently, as well as having to have the mannequins at the exhibition hand carved because Bowie's frame was so tiny, they found the mask that Yentob got [forced] David to have made, so the mannequins all have David Bowie's actual face on, as imprinted and transferred from that mask!

 

Yesterday I went to the V&A for the David Bowie Is exhibition.  I bought my tickets in September when the exhibition was first announced and I'm not even a little bit surprised it has given the V&A the biggest pre-sales ever.  

The second half of the exhibition was my favourite, where things were more firmly divided and there was a room dedicated to the Berlin years (including some of David Bowie original paintings!!!), a video room with 3 walls of enormous projections of live performances, and a room dedicated to Bowie's acting career - with a selection of clips running on a loop.  This included a clip from his stage performance of the critically acclaimed The Elephant Man which was really moving and makes me inclined to write to the BBC (the clip was credited to the BBC archive) and beg them to release it on DVD. (you can see the same clip here from 2:11)  There was also a clip from Bowie's first Art School-esq film which was delightful.

Everything else on the loop, except The Prestige, I've seen, multiple times.  So, I've ordered The Prestige on DVD and I'm rewatching everything else.  Starting with the first Bowie movie I ever watched; Labyrinth.

Labyrinth (1986)

The opening credits take me right back to my first ever viewing; laying on the floor of my friend's living room at a pajama party.  Being absolutely mesmerised by the (now looking very low tech CGI) flying owl and captivated from the off by the music.  Refusing to go home at 8pm, choosing instead to remain glued to the screen until the end of the film.

And then, just as we're warming to Sarah for hating babies (an impassioned position I continue to occupy to this day with a few exceptions allowed over the years for family and friend's babies) there he is, all glitter and eyeliner.  I don't remember being afraid of Jareth; he's surely the most non-threatening of baddies.  More accurately I remember being then, as now, mesmerised.  The crystal manipulation (famously done by a man standing behind Bowie with his arms under Bowie's armpits) remains a delightful trick and, as with many Henson productions, maintains its magic years later thanks to the simplicity of the visual.

Like so many family films of the 80s, there's a lot of cheeky stuff and more than a few lines that would be considered inappropriate - if only because of use of words they just don't allow anymore (see also: Back to the Future and the use of 'shit')  I like that the DVD copy has decent enough audio that the you can understand some of what the goblins who turn over the stones in the maze, things like "You're mother is a fragging aardvark!" always make me laugh.  Concluding with some cracking crotch shots, the beautiful Escher room scene (which involved some crazy ass harnesses for walking around 180 degrees which can be viewing in making of documentaries, if your copy is so endowed) and, of course, the soundtrack there is so much to love about Labyrinth.

There's a lot in Labyrinth I've more or less been chasing since I first saw it; a Ludo to call my own, a flamboyant and gorgeous wardrobe, David Bowie promising to be my slave if I love him and fear him.....usual stuff.  I also admitted to the friend (who wasn't a Bowie fan) who I went to the V&A with yesterday that I've been waiting for 4 years for someone to have a fancy dress party so I can go as Jareth; I think perhaps my 29th birthday this year might be the moment if a fancy dress party doesn't happen before then.

Like many of my peers, Labyrinth is a seminal film for me and continues to be in the hard repeat section of my DVD collection; again, as with many of my peers it even taught me a few things - the meaning of oubliette was recently a BBC quiz show answer which caused twitter to erupt in Labyrinth triumph.  I recently bought The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg which laments Labyrinth as a joke in an otherwise faultless career, which alienated fans at the time.  What Pegg neglects to consider is how many people, like me, grew up with Labyrinth and came to Bowie, if only partially*, through it.



*My first Bowie memory is around age 5 or 6, playing with my brother's hand-me-down 70s space station Lego, singing "Ground control to Major Tom, commencing countdown, engines on, check ignition....."  Obviously my first Bowie experience was much before then as I'd learnt the lyrics to Space Oddity, but yeah, he get's stuck in your head doesn't he? He's been in my head my whole life.  How wonderful.

 I'm currently going through a Bowie phase so intense it is only rivalled by a three month period in 2005 in which I ate only beans on toast and ryvita and listened only to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

I've been scavenging the net, and newly bought 'Starman: David Bowie - The Definitive Biography' for all the ins and outs I need.  I am a big believer in finding the music of an artist before you read up on the mythology and political wrangling that brought them to the fore because it can have such a dramatic impact on your relationship with the music.  This impact isn't always negative (just last year Nailed to History: The Story of the Manic Street Preachers prompted in me a new openness to the Manics commercially disastrous Know Your Enemy) but it can be and I think the immediacy of music in coming through your stereo in a closed room is something that should not be compromised by critical analysis in the first case.

I am struck by the similarity in the story of Bowie's rise to fame with the Manics upward trajectory; from letter writing campaigns, to form coming before substance as they both proclaimed themselves to be - not the next big thing - but the big thing.  I find it fascinating that whilst it takes time - both Bowie and the Manics taking several years from inception to record deal to mainstream recognition - pure, unwavering self belief, self aggrandizement and ruthless ambition is truly the best policy.

As far as my own relationship with Bowie and the Manics goes I think the similarities in their stories are striking; from modest backgrounds, determined to not just transcend those roots but to realise their individual love affairs with rock n roll in it's most idealised form.  Glam rock - 'high glam' as Bowie apparently termed it once, given it was primarily a conceptual statement - of this ilk is borne out of frustration and ambition, and as such is much more seductive than any other music genre I have encountered; perhaps the reason I am only obsessive over these two acts has more than a little to do with that.  Yes, in my youth I donned the uniform of baggy jeans and jumpers for Sterophonics, Coldplay, Travis, Mull Historical Society, Embrace, and Easyworld gigs, but the defining and enduring relationship has and always will be with the glam of the Manics and David Bowie.

Such preening, extroversion, and posturing are at odds with my own natural state.  At my core I am an introvert - and I'm ok with that - but somehow Bowie and, to a greater degree given their continued live presence, the Manics, provide a safe framework within which something in me cuts loose and I am free - eyes blackened with eyeliner, hair glossed and often dyed, short skirts, 'DIY aesthetic', pressed to the front of the stage calling out lyrics with all the simultaneous seriousness and irony required of a good Manics fan.  

Bowie's honest/dishonest declarations on his sexuality and wilful visual confrontation provided me with a much needed touchstone for queer identity when I was a teenager living in a world stripped of any alternative influences or role models.  That his purported bisexuality may have been nothing more than a calculated technique to court publicity is, to me, irrelevant - it provided me an image and a route into a world I inhabit now.

It struck me as ironic when I was watching a late night repeat of Radiohead at Glastonbury in 1997 and the crowd sang to 'Creep', that a song about isolation and alienation could unite so many people without any apparent hypocrisy for them.  That is the remarkable thing about music - it starts off purporting to be about alienation, outsiders and otherness and creates, as it gains momentum, an entire sub culture -membership of which depends on correctly enacting that same 'otherness'.  I do wonder at what point it stops being true - how many of those people repeating the lyrics of Creep like a mantra have any connection to the content? When does belonging obscure identification?

I think that, almost uniquely, glam does have an honesty in its performance because it is founded on artifice.  The whole intention is to create a new reality which stands both in parallel to, and above, the norm.  Followers of glam, recreating themselves to attend gigs, are aping their idols in every respect - stripping it off to go back to work on Monday is in keeping with the artifice.  Many people speak of coming to glam through one defining realisation after a single spectacle - for many with David Bowie I understand it was his 1972 performance of Starman on Top of the Pops that changed their relationship with fashion, sub culture and music.  When that is the case, when one moment draws you in, and you can dress yourself in that moment, I propose that you are recreating the moment of epiphany.  A genre which makes you see the world differently in one move can, therefore, offer you revelation every time you dress.  And you can dress a hundred times, a hundred different ways.

Bowie recognised that - that's why he was able to reinvent himself so many times and why the Manics duplicated so many of his statements (from replicating a certain image in You Love Us (Heavenly Version) from Bowie's Boys Keep Swinging amongst many, many other visual statements).  It's a vocabulary of outrage, confrontation, statement and, above all, freedom.