Our theme of soundtrack reviews goes boldly forth into Sean Penn related territory today. Vedder has a unique musical stamp which features in all his recordings from early Pearl Jam through to the present day. Certainly, very few American bands were as explosive, influential and clearly talented as that group. Singer-lyricist Vedder has matured in his endeavors since their 1991 debut Ten. If you are familiar with his usual subjects of poetic trauma and chaos, this tale of tortured masculinity will come as no surprise.
The film itself focuses on the dour and bold figure of Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless. Vedder encapsulates the heroic ideal with his forceful but plainspoken lyrics. The true-life subject of the film, McCandless is an overprivileged kid who rejects materialism, his family and his earthly possessions to wander the vacant expanses of North America only to die, starving and freezing and alone in Alaska. Pearl Jam frontman Vedder who wrote and performed the soundtrack has obviously empathised in some way with the Supertramp character in his search for isolation and harmony with nature.
I would recommend against focussing too much on the slightly pretentious lyrics which try to change the actuality of a pointless death of a young man. McCandless died in an abandoned school bus only 30 miles from the nearest road, the coroners report stating he probably ate poisonous berries because he intentionally didn’t bring enough food with him.
The best song on the album is undoubtedly Tuolmne possibly because it has no lyrics, just Eddie plucking his guitar, the kind of riffs you could imagine a kid like the Supertramp strumming away as he camped in the desert or sat in a frozen bus waiting for death. We’ve posted the highly limited edition vinyl only release in high quality MP3 especially for you, enjoy. More soundtrack reviews and recommendations here.
Here is part 3 of our radio transcription of an interview Jeff Mills gave to RBMA. You can check out parts 1 and 2 here. You can listen to the radio show in full here or download it here. The accompanying tracklist is as follows:
Jeff Mills – Landscape (Utopian Dream) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Blue Print – Tresor
Underground Resistance – Eye of the Storm – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Predator – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Base Camp Alpha 808 – UR
Underground Resistance – Final Frontier – Underground Resistance
X-101 – G-Force – Tresor
X-102 – Ground Zero (The Planet) – Tresor
X-102 – The Rings Of Saturn – Underground Resistance
Jeff Mills – Perfecture (Somewhere Around Now) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – The Bells – Axis
Jeff Mills – Transformation B (Rotwang’s Revenge) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Robot Replica – Tresor
Click the vinyl sticker pictures to hear the tracks.
Life in the Jeff-set
We started with Saturn, we chose it mainly because of the physical aspects of the planet, in that it resembled a record. We were interested in using very small things to relay certain messages so the label design was used as the main part of the explanation of the release and the music would explain or support it – in the grooves. So the Rings of Saturn was a perfect release. The rings, like a tree when you cut it open and look a the rings of time it tells the history of the tree itself. We looked at the planet as the rings telling the history of it. Months and months of research about the planet, and then we began production in the summer of 1992. From X-101 we learned that each of us have a very unique way of producing music. We designated who would do what for that particular release. Rob didn’t have that much experience at the time. He had set up a small studio in the corner he had very small pieces of equipment but very interesting sounds. So we designated that he produce very simple, very minimal type of tracks. Mike would produce more orchestrated strings because he could player better than both of us. And my job would be to have the more experimental parts. We would put all these things together and that would be the album. X-102 would be something we always wanted to finish we never thought that we ever finished that release. So that brings us to the year 2009 so we decided to go back and revisit it, update the album and create a performance.
Ring ding
I got an offer to move to New York as a resident DJ at a couple of clubs. Part of the deal of my moving to New York was that I would have to have an office so that I could run the label from there. When I moved and realized that Mike did not want to bring UR to New York, I had all these resources – and office, telephone, all these free things that this club had given me. With all this I should start a label myself! After a few months of thinking about it and thinking about the type of music I would like to do I came up with the idea of Axis. Until then the music was very song structured so you would have the introduction and bridge, even though they were instrumentals you got the idea that if someone was to sing on top of these songs that would be OK, they were structured in that way. So I thought that being a DJ it would be great to produce music that was more simplified so that you could manipulate it more. By limiting how layered the tracks would be – it would be better. Back then as DJs we used to really seek out dub versions and instrumental versions so that we could extend and create our own songs. I thought that producing in this way would set a tone with DJs. It was always my intention to make a label where the music was more simple, easy for the DJ to play and program. I asked Rob who was recording on his own label in Detroit, if he would do the first recording on the label jointly with me. It was called Tranquilizer, it was so different it did not take off so well. The second release which was Inner Sanctum by Rob only, did a little bit better as it was more danceable. By the third release which was Step To Enchantment, the Mecca EP, things began to take off, at that time.
Mecca steps
The label Purpose Maker was created soon after I had moved to Chicago from New York. I had no friends, I was basically alone, so I had plenty of time to produce a lot of music. I thought I can produce so much that it would be interesting to produce a case of records just for me. So records that were even mastered, pressed. But no one had any copies, I had all the copies. I had begun to make music just for me to play. Things like The Bells, Alarms, they were just for me. I had begun to play them as I was making this box, as I was playing them DJs were asking what these songs were. I got the indication that The Bells was something people really responded to and DJs wanted to have. So I said ok. Maybe I should make it available to release these tracks. That’s how I started the label Purpose Maker. Once I got he notion the DJs understood exactly what the music was for, and began to hear other producers and DJs try to emulate it. I thought the task is done, now I can move on to the next.
The bells, the bells!
Metropolis is an epic film by Fritz Lang that was produced in 1929, it’s become on of the most popular science fiction films of our time. There were many years that brought me to the point of working on that project. There were many discussions about how electronic music could play a role in cinema, where it might serve cinema the best and vice versa – what type of films it might work the best for. After so many discussions with so many people I thought that someone should do something, so I’ll try to produce an entire soundtrack for an entire film! Just to see what happens, even if it doesn’t turn out too well at least the news that I tried to do something, if that news got round to other producers, maybe it would give them some indication that somebody’s trying to do something to broaden and expand electronic music into different areas. So without permission from the film company I just went and bought a VHS tape of Metropolis, took notes, divided it into 12 different parts and produced music for each section. Many different versions for each section and chose one that would work. I went to an editing studio, taking the VHS tape and put the music that I produced to this tape. Then I began to search and find out who might have a contact to the film company in Munich that maybe IU could show this film to them of what I did and maybe that they would allow me to show it to other people. I did that, being lucky enough find a contact through Tresor Records in Berlin who knew someone who knew someone, who knew someone that worked at Transit Films in Munich. Luckily someone in that office was young enough, maybe an intern or something to know who I was as a DJ. They decided to say ok, they would give me rights to show the film for academic reasons, just for the example of putting electronic music to this film, we could have one of rights to show the film. That’s how the project came. That’s how I did it.
To continue our theme of soundtrack reviews, we go for a film which is both baffling and excellent. For anyone who has seen the opening sequence of this modern tour de force, consisting of a black limousine snaking it’s way through the Hollywood Hills, should remember the uneasy, eerie and emotionally overwrought orchestral tinged electronica of the title theme which emerges from the nervous, up-tempo swing rhythm of a big band dance. This is typical of Badalamenti’s contribution to the score, juxtaposing innocent pop nuggets into a dark soundscape becoming murkier at every turn. The soundtrack as a whole turns on the usual Lynchian elements, the brooding atmosphere of Angelo Badalamenti’s ominous synth-ensemble cues are thrown against Lynch’s own, off-centre, kitsch compositions.
...and now I'm in this dream place. Well, you can imagine how I feel.
The plot follows Betty Elms (played by Naomi Watts) a perky Hollywood hopeful as she tries to unravel the mystery behind a nameless woman (Laura Harring), her amnesia and involvement in a car crash. Over the next two and a half hours of hallucinatory thrills and charged erotica, a new reality emerges, portraying the seedy unpleasantries of both the film’s protagonists and the Hollywood machine itself. The film takes an incomprehensible turn around two thirds of the way through, it becomes confusing when characters disappear and plot devices dribble out – but all things considered it does make some semblance of sense in the end. The narrative is playfully surreal rather than frustratingly over-intricate. The regular themes of Lynch’s best work are all here – strange Machiavellian characters behind the scenes, extreme violence, obsessive characters and mainly the surreal being an active part of daily life. Without trying to give too much away, the film culminates in a delusional masturbatory fantasy and suicide which explains the dream-like goings on of the previous two and half hours.
It'll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else.
Like all their collaborations, Mulholland Drive’s is equally eerie, elegant and eclectic. By spanning the aforementioned up-beat Jitterbug into the haunting orchestral drone of the film’s main theme in it’s first two scenes alone the audience is left in no doubt of being transported into a very different world. Baldalamenti’s own work varies from the jazzy Dinner Party Pool Music to the ominous ambience of Diner, Silencio and the Dwarfland / Love Theme. Lynch’s own surfy, guitar-based compositions, Mountains Falling and Go Get Some aren’t quite as transporting as Badalamenti’s pieces, but they certainly offer a sonic twist on the sunny California that Lynch portrays and subverts in the film. Similarly, Linda Scott’s sugary sweet I’ve Told Every Star” takes on a slightly disturbing edge within the context of the film and album, while Llorando by Rebecca Del Rio, a Spanish a cappella version of Roy Orbison’s classic Crying only sounds more vulnerable and heart-wreching. A focused and accomplished piece of work, Mulholland Drive is a mysterious and affecting soundtrack from one of the most consistently creative teams working in film.
So since you agree, you must be someone who does not care about the good life.
Although not garnering quite the same effect as sitting in a darkened theatre, experiencing the exaggerated gestures, heightened emotions and odd plot turns. All in all, the soundtrack is every bit as entertaining, quirky and surreal as the film itself. Badalamenti and Lynch weave a soundscape that characteristically pulls the listener from one mood to the next. From brooding foreboding to flavourless yet intriguing pastiches there is a constant undercurrent of hallucination. The atmosphere, emotion, dream and subsequent reality shock of the cinema are all here to be enjoyed through your home stereo.
The rest of the cast can stay, that's up to you. But that lead girl is not up to you. Now you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me, two more times, if you do bad.
Like the film, the soundtrack builds towards Rebekah Del Rio’s, Llorando (Roy Orbison’s, Crying translated into Spanish). Sung a cappella and with haunting magnificence it could feel as though the track would not be as powerful without the context of the film. The unexpected focus on sound (as opposed to image) when this song appears in the film in the Silencio Club scene, sets it apart from other sound elements in the film. There, musicians and singers pretend to perform, but the music is all canned. Says the emcee: “This is all a tape recording. It is an illusion.” Up in the balcony, the pair begin crying. Betty shakes and weeps in some hyperemotional response to the music. This is truly music for the soul, offering something deeper, perhaps representing Lynch’s own ideas about life.
So give it a listen and see if it can elevate you towards the fantastical mental energy of Betty herself (or is that Diane). Angelo Badalamenti plays the espresso-drinking movie executive at the beginning of the film, incidentally.
Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
I saw some fairly long sections of the film, read the script, and just wrote loads of music. I tried to write to the scenery and the story rather than specific themes for characters. It’s not really the kind of narrative that would suit that. It was all about the underlying menace of the film, the greed, and that against the fucked up, oppressive, religious mood and the kid in the middle of it all. Only a couple of parts were written for specific scenes. I was happier writing lots of music for the story and having Paul Thomas Anderson (the film’s director) fit some of it to the film. – Jonny Greenwood
Plainview: Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen!
If you haven’t seen this film wait for a day when you are ready for a surreal, jaw-dropping, no-holds-barred barrage of hyper-reality. A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business. Daniel Day-Lewis clearly immerses himself so far into the role of prospector Daniel Plainview that it is frightening. The movie takes place in early 20th century arid Texan and Californian plains – where oil has been discovered and is primed to be exploited. Plainview and other prospectors are rapidly spreading across the land, trying to convince the unwitting local farmers and ranchers of old western settlements that their oil drilling will bring prosperity to their towns. The period setting of emerging capitalism is juxtaposed with a twisted and haunting modern classical score that only adds to the bizarre drama which unfolds onscreen.
Eli Sunday: Don't bully me, Daniel!
It was surprising to find out after listening to the soundtrack that it was composed by Jonny Greenwood the guitarist from Radiohead (a band that despite their constant acclaim, in all honestly passed me by). Greenwood’s score is captivating and greatly contributes to the literally tectonic forces which lie beneath the drama. The music is performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra led by Robert Ziegler, the Emperor Quartet, and special mention must go to the minimalist brooding performances from Caroline Dale on cello and Michael Dussek on piano. The score was considered a shoe-in for the Academy Award for Original Music Score at the 2008 Oscars, but it was ruled ineligible due to its use of pre-existing material. The score features elements from a previous Greenwood composition and works from Arvo Pärt and Johannes Brahms.
Eli Sunday: I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!
There are an array unconventional sonic textures and uniquely angular melodies which shape this score. The soundtrack to There Will Be Blood will appeal to serious movie-music fans, who will appreciate this rare find: an intelligent, beautiful and deeply cinematic orchestrated score. The moment I realised this soundtrack is a masterpiece is where they first strike oil and the action is accompanied by a huge, incredible percussive sound – look (and listen) out for it next time you see the film. It’s not often it can be claimed of a film, but it would simply not be so great were it not for Greenwood’s music. He deepens the image, gives character to the shot and establishes feeling. Dialogue is sparse in this cinematic epic which lasts well over two and a half hours. And thoroughly cinematic it is – it shows, it doesn’t talk it’s audience towards a conclusion and thus with it’s music inexorably bound in its telling, by showing gives us meaning and feeling.
Plainview: Do you? I drink your water, Eli. I drink it up. Everyday. I drink the blood of lamb from Bandy's tract.
Greenwood engulfs us in the world of the gothic and takes us across a fascinating, ethereal place where nothing is certain with one exception: that doom is fast approaching for everyone within the film. No one stands a chance against the ravenous nature of greed and exploitation. You might be unprepared for the outbursts of melodic darkness contained in both the film and score combined, but the result is that the film’s theme will last in your conscience long after the final credits roll. Nonesuch Records offers a digital download of three bonus tracks upon the purchase of the soundtrack from its web site – highly recommended, get a preview with the title track we’ve put up for you here.
From the beginning of film, music has been involved in its presentation. In the early 20th century, live music was used to indicate certain narrative and emotional cues for silent moving pictures. If the animated actor sensed danger, the music would speed up and if that same actor fell in love with the heroine, a ballad could be heard throughout the theater. A good soundtrack is inexorably attached to a movie and will, for good or bad, remind you of that film, just as the images are now married to your favourite songs. What is becoming a regular feature on the blog, we look at great films through their soundtracks – find the rest here.
Knockin' on Kristoffersons door
Billy: Ol’ Pat… Sheriff Pat Garrett. Sold out to the Santa Fe ring. How does it feel?
Garrett: It feels like… times have changed.
Billy: Times, maybe. Not me.
Bob Dylan survived a near-fatal motorcycle crash in 1965, but his artistic persona of the day did not. The drug-fueled wild-haired rock poet who could churn out a million songs a minute was gone forever. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for if he had continued along that course, he probably wouldn’t have survived to the present. Instead, he calmed down a little, and for the next decade took a kind of whimsical, laid-back approach to his music. There’s some really interesting material from this period – anyone not familiarized with Self Portrait or New Morning should grab it yesterday – but the most unexpected project he undertook was a collaboration with famed director Sam Peckinpah on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
How's Jesus look to you now, Bob?
One of the finest westerns ever made (especially the director’s cut), it tells the story of Pat Garrett (Kris Kristofferson), erstwhile travelling companion of the outlaw Billy the Kid (James Coburn) who has become a sheriff, tasked by cattle interests with ridding the territory of Billy. After Billy escapes, Pat assembles a posse and chases him through the territory, culminating in a final confrontation at Fort Sumner, but is unaware of the full scope of the cattle interests’ plans for the New West. The powers that be want Billy out of New Mexico, not for ethical reasons, but rather so that things can be neatly protected for the approaching business exploitation. “Billy, they don’t like you to be so free!” proclaims Bob Dylan’s theme song, summing up why the power men find Billy so irritating – his refusal to compromise and his declaration of his own personal independence.
Director Peckinpah uses two regular themes in most of his work, the death of the West, and men living past their time and deciding whether or not to accept change. The cinematography is beautiful and haunting at the same time and matches the mood and characterization in the film. Pat Garret knew he had a job to do, but just could not handle the fact it was a friend he had to kill. The myth and actual facts of the last days of Billy the Kid play out the doomed friendship between the title characters – but the film is really about the death of an American way of life. The best and saddest moments in the film involve characters who know they are going to die and accept it. Using Bob Dylan’s score could have been intrusive to this subtle film, and made it feel tacky in a trying-to-be-hip kind of way. Instead the score works well and gives the film a soulful feel. It’s testament to the director’s skill that he chose to make a work about the end of the myth of “Billy the Kid” instead of glorifying it further. Neither Garrett nor the Kid are very admirable in this film, they feel distant because there is no moral centre to the film – as there was little or none to real 19th century West – an empty space, scenery and some misfits of various backgrounds trying to make a living in an inhospitable domain.
Hell, that was a year ago. I shot him straight up.
Dylan composed the score for the film, but it doesn’t sound quite like anything else in his catalogue. There is, of course, the signature acoustic guitar and harmonica, but the tracks (most of which are instrumental) have a windswept south-of-the-border feel. When you hear the Spanish guitar picking and the leisurely congo drums, you feel almost as if you’re wandering through prickly pear thickets in Sonora. The score is defined by the iconic “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, which is one of the songwriter’s finest works. His version (which remains the definitive interpretation) is bare and sorrowful; in the film, it accompanies a scene in which an old outlaw watches the sun set while dying from a gunshot wound. Dylan recorded the final version of Knockin’ On Heavens Door at a session on Warner Bros. Records soundstage in Burbank, California. “It was very early in the morning,” recalls drummer Jim Keltner. “I think the session was 10 a.m There weren’t any overdubs on that, the singers were singing live, little pump organ and guitars. This was for a particular scene in the movie when Slim Pickens is dying and that’s the first time I ever cried while I played. It was the combination of the words, Bob’s voice, the actual music itself, the changes, and seeing the screen. In those days you were on a big soundstage, and you had this massive screen that you can see on the wall, with the scene running when you’re playing. I cried through that whole take.”
As an extra incentive, Dylan also acted in the film, playing the role of a knife-throwing outlaw. His character plays an important part, representing the storyteller that passes down the legend of this story to all generations. If you’ve ever wanted to see Bob Dylan slay someone with a knife, now’s your chance. If you’re planning to watch it, go for the full 122 minute director’s cut, which is immeasurably superior. Download the soundtrack here.
Based upon J.G. Ballard’s novel of the same name David Cronenberg’s film explores extreme human behaviour – the fascination with death and eroticisation of danger. After being involved in a head-on collision the homonymous lead character James Ballard (James Spader) and his wife Catherine Ballard (Deborah Karak Unger) find themselves increasingly involved with a cult of car crash fetishists, an underground sub-culture of omnisexual car-crash victims who use car crashes to fuel their sex lives. The movie essentially consists of a series of car crashes juxtaposed with sex scenes, providing a cautionary tale of a mechanised industrial society’s tendency to dull the human senses.
A psychopathic hymn
Some of J.G. Ballard’s (the author) favourite films were created by directors who work in tandem with great composers. For example, David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock, who Ballard has written about in a variety of contexts, had long standing relationships with composers Angelo Badalamenti and Bernard Herrmann respectively. Appropriately, the film adaptation of Crash was created by one of the most important director / composer teams of contemporary cinema: the Canadian duo of David Cronenberg and Howard Shore. J.G. Ballard has hailed Cronenberg’s Crash (made in 1996) as “the first film of the 21st century,” and in a review of one of the director’s more recent works, A History of Violence (2005) he wrote “all Cronenberg’s films make us edge back into our seats, gripped by the story unfolding on screen but aware that something unpleasant is going on in the seats around us.” The effect is compounded by the relationship between Cronenberg’s film in the context of a Howard Shore score.
Relentless sexual content
Shore has taken the opportunity to experiment with the music. In the liner notes for the soundtrack he explains that “… 75% of the score was composed while 25% was mutated after the music was recorded.” His approach is to focus on the emotions (or lack thereof) being played out on screen. Using six electric guitars, three harps, three woodwinds and two percussionists to make up most of the score, the ensemble provides a metallic touching on industrial sound, presenting little in the way of recurring themes. It is clear Shore understands that space and silence are important in manipulating the viewer’s perception in a film such as this. He has generated soundscapes under which the on-screen characters play out their increasingly hazardous and destructive lives. Listened to on it’s own, without Cronenberg’s scenarios to guide the audience, Crash is a difficult listen, with electric guitars monotonously moving forward, repetitive yet arousing. The woodwinds are used sparingly and tend to appear in the more intimate moments. When the small string orchestra makes an appearance it appears the characters may actually care for on another.
Metallic and melodic
There is a subtle use of electronic effects which is mirrored by lead character Ballard’s comments about technology in the film; the car is the technology we are most involved in, providing a marriage between human imagination and technology. These words could be used to describe Shore’s own take on his score for this film. The mixture of the electronic manipulation and acoustic instruments is carefully considered by the composer. Antique harps plucked over images of slow-moving heavy traffic provide a connection between old and new technology. The score mirrors the film in it’s linking of technology with the carnal. What is often referred to as a “love affair” with the automobile as resulted in a world-wide and growing addiction to a means of transportation which is unhealthy and destructive. Aside from the pollution and accident rate the addiction has also increased human isolation. Hidden in private shells people only interact when necessary, the interaction rarely becoming intimate until it is violent. Cronenberg, J.G. Ballard and Howard Shore put forward the idea that machines have changed our humanity and Crash says that our sexuality can mingle with the technology we hold so dear. Film director Bernardo Bertolucci apparently told Cronenberg that Crash is a religious masterpiece.
Technology and desire
It is easy to tell as the film progresses and protagonist James Ballard unravels psychologically the music become stranger to represent this. In one scene where Ballard, his wife and fetishist Vaughan are entering a car-wash, Shore creates a sort of music concrete (best described as electronic music created from editing fragments of natural and industrial sounds). The car-wash scene begins with detailed recordings of the convertible car as it reconfigures it’s roof; a window closing electrically to hermetically seal the occupants in the watertight car, giving way to the mixture of thick wads of cloth and leather against metal and streaming water sounds. The pulsing machine noise builds to an intensity measured by the sexual activity inside the car. However, mostly throughout the film, music is rarely louder than the dialogue, engines, and traffic noise dominating the sonic landscape of Crash.
Collision of flesh and metal
Shore says that Cronenberg has always given him considerable freedom in their collaborations. Having scored over a hundred films Shore claims that for him film and music are intertwined, that the film performs his music for him, in a way. The score successfully creates an atmosphere that allows the violence and sexuality to seep out, rather than represent it explicitly as would be the temptation for many composers. The various performers and soloists show discipline in how their respective parts are played, never conveying too much emotion into the score. It is unlike anything Shore has produced before or since. He has gone on to compose full-blown orchestral scores for the likes of Peter Jackson and his Lord of The Rings trilogy, but the budget would not allow for such extravagance in this film, leading to a much more interesting product. The understanding of dynamics and layering are clear here, the limited tonal and thematic range and a reluctance to key changes creates hypnotically repetitive melodic patterns – hypnotising the audience to the ritual significance of automobile trauma. This intelligent balance creates the perfect environment for action, magnifying the images and their meanings. The score juxtaposes the most ancient instruments (such as harp and flute) with the most contemporary (sampling and computer manipulation), reflecting J.G. Ballard’s comparison of basic human needs (sex) with contemporary culture (cars).
As a bit of a diversion, here is a classic Squarepusher track Red-Hot Car cut together with a re-edit of some scenes from the film. Nothing like the soundtrack for the actual film, but fun all the same.
The bleak music of Bowie’s collaborations with Brian Eno provides a fitting backdrop to this film, as his icy soul killer prose perfectly reflected the frozen and fragmented lives of Christiane and her gang: an “alternative family” taking respite in discos and underground train stations of 1970’s West Berlin. Removed from that context, the album is still enjoyable for the sheer quality of the songs. The cliché about David Bowie says he’s a musical chameleon, adapting himself according to fashion and trends. While such a criticism is glib, there’s no denying that Bowie demonstrated remarkable skill for perceiving musical trends at his peak in the ’70s.
The film itself is based on the testimony of a teenager (Vera Christiane Felscherinow) who gets involved in drugs at 12, hooked on heroin by 13 and a prostitute by 14 to support her habit. She became part of a notorious group of teenaged drug-users and prostitutes, mainly at the largest train station in West Berlin – Bahnof Zoo. Her story came to light after a meeting with two journalists while she was a witness in a trial against a man who paid underaged girls with heroin in return for sex. The journalists wanted to expose the problem among teenagers in Berlin which was plainly surrounded by strong taboos. Christiane provided an in-depth description of the life of drugs and prostitution that she and other teenagers in West Berlin experienced in the 1970’s. Her interviews were extensive, taking a total of 2 months to produce. A book was eventually published chronicling her life from 1975 to 1978, when she was aged 12 to 15. In 1981 the story was made into a film directed by Uli Edel. Christiane worked as an advisor on the film and much is shot on location in authentic and gloomy surroundings of Gropiusstadt and Bahnhof Zoo. The actors here are genuine teenagers, around 14 to 15 years old. This makes the film so much more powerful and shocking, and much more believable. The effects of heroin on these kids is staggering to behold; they turn into these sickly shadows of their former selves, like zombies, in search of their next fix. And strangely, Christiane and her friends never seem to enjoy the high from the heroin. You will never see such a bleak vision of kids lost in a surreal hell of drug addiction. And to add further to the intensity, the film is long, 138 minutes uncut, becoming steadily darker and seedier by the minute, until the viewer wonders just how long can this young girl go on like this without completely self-destructing. And amazingly, throughout the running time, the film never preaches, never becomes sentimental, as most American drug films often do. The film style is specifically German.
Verite
It’s interesting to note the film does not glamorize heroin, as soon as the hard drug abuse begins in the film, the mood changes entirely. The uplifting and snappy music of Bowie whom Christiane worships is heard frequently throughout the first section of the film – there is a moment of insight and revelation when Christiane goes to see Bowie in concert – where he appears as himself in the film. After her and her friends fall into heroin addiction the Bowie music symbolically disappears, to be replaced by the eerie Eno-driven sound-scapes. The atmosphere is gritty and dark, pulling no punches with its depiction of Berlin in those days. The days look dark and gloomy to begin with, as the film progresses the day resembles more and more the night. Great locations and beautiful if functional photography complete this unique, raw and graphic film. In it’s nature it completely takes away the idea of the highs and lows of the typical drug film.
Some of Bowie’s very best music is compiled here. There are the obviously cinematic tracks – the steely proto-techno glide of ‘V-2 Schneider’, the dark ambience of ‘Warszawa’ and ‘Sense Of Doubt’ – alongside the jagged pop of ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. ‘Christiane F.’ holds one fascinating rarity, too: a version of his finest song, ‘Heroes’, that lapses into impassioned German halfway through (extracted from the German edition of the ‘Heroes’ album). As the faintly ludicrous climax of Bowie’s infatuation with the Deutsche scene, it completes an essential and compelling album. You can download that track here. By the mid-’70s, he developed an effete, sophisticated version of Philly soul that he dubbed “plastic soul,” which eventually morphed into the eerie avant-pop of 1976’s Station to Station, which took the plastic soul of Young Americans into darker, avant-garde-tinged directions, yet was also a huge hit, generating the top ten single ‘Golden Years.’ The album inaugurated Bowie’s persona of the elegant ‘Thin White Duke,’ and it reflected Bowie’s growing cocaine-fueled paranoia. Soon, he decided his Los Angeles lifestyle was too boring and returned to England; shortly after arriving back in London, he gave the awaiting crowd a Nazi salute, a signal of his growing, drug-addled detachment from reality. The incident caused enormous controversy, and Bowie left the country to settle in Berlin, where he lived and worked with Brian Eno. Once in Berlin, Bowie sobered up and began painting, as well as studying art. He also developed a fascination with German electronic music, which Eno helped him fulfill with the work which went on to make up the majority of this soundtrack album.
After the initial success of the book and the film, Christiane found herself becoming an unlikely celebrity, both in Germany and other countries in Western Europe. A subculture of teenage girls in Germany began to emulate her style of dress as well as making visits to the Bahnhof Zoo station, which became an unlikely tourist attraction. This surprised authorities on youth drug abuse, who feared that despite the film’s bleakness and the many sordid scenes (particularly those portraying the horrific realities of cold turkey), vulnerable youths may have regarded Christiane as a cult heroine and role model. Wolf Heckmann, West Berlin’s drug commissioner of the time: “The book and film have increased interest in drugs in this city. Kids who come to visit used to ask to see the Berlin Wall. Now they want to see the Zoo Station.” The book sold so well (it was translated into most major West European languages) that Christiane remains able to support herself from the royalties. Christiane still receives fan-mail and is occasionally contacted by the German media, wanting to know how she is doing after all these years.
