By UKmovieposters.co.uk, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12506432
Absolute Beginners - (1986)
Talk about interesting failures - I watched Absolute Beginners soon after it's release in '86, being interested in everything David Bowie. I didn't like it all that much - and had never watched it since. You'll hear it mentioned early on in Robert Altman's The Player, when characters played by Paul Hewitt and Fred Ward talk about memorable long shots in cinematic history they recall. Yeah - that shot near the beginning goes on for an eternity and looks to involve a thousand people carefully choreographed, but the cheats are all there. The camera passes by walls, that moment of pure black an obvious cutting point, and camera flashes do the same. Once you see it, you'll understand why it was impossible to capture that in one, genuine take. Even the segments are impressive though. But the movie itself - confusing, uneven and throwing themes around in disjointed ways, is somewhat messy. That unevenness includes the music numbers, which range from great to sub-par. Bowie's title song, "Absolute Beginners", would be a hit for him in Britain and is on another level to the rest of the movie (including his in-movie song "That's Motivation") - although Sade's "Killer Blow" approaches greatness.
I was hoping for a bit more from this second viewing of Absolute Beginners. Bowie's involvement reeks of irony, seeing as one of the themes involves artistic integrity and an artist's need to resist selling out - at the very point in Bowie's career when he was selling out. From there we morph into the real-life 1958 Notting Hill race riots - tied into the plot of the film via unscrupulous property investors and corrupt landlords evicting tenants on the basis of a wave on anti-immigration sentiment post World War II. Main character Colin (Eddie O'Connell) lives in an area which still shows signs of the destruction wrought on Britain, and the whole story is based on a generation untouched by the horrors of that era. O'Connell (seeming like a 1980s answer to Tom Courtenay) was making his debut, and didn't perform well. His career never took off, and I have no idea why he was given such an important role. The movie killed British studio Goldcrest Films. It was meant to be the movie musical of the 1980s, but the title song and that famous long take are the only successes related to it.
Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, James Fox, Sade and Steven Berkoff couldn't save it. Meaning to be different, the weirdness just comes off as plain weird in an unenjoyable way. Colin's family is introduced to us, and patriarch Arthur (Ray Davies) sings a whole song while we take in information that will have absolutely zero bearing on the rest of the film. We just don't see them again. The inverse goes for all of the black characters who only show up in any meaningful way when the race riots start - where were they during this film's first three-quarters? Silly dancing, strange costumes and equally off songs feel like chores to get through. I'm fascinated by this film's failure, which seems to have it's genesis in Julien Temple throwing most of screenwriter Christopher Wicking's ideas into the bin, and adding this flair to the movie - it's a flair that feels meaningless. One of the great films of the 1980s that was never made - Absolute Beginners stands as a testament to screwing up promising projects.
5/10
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Last edited by PHOENIX74; 12-12-23 at 11:18 PM.