Lou Reed’s Berlin
Directed by Julian Schnabel
at Film Forum
Mamma Mia!
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Julian Schnabel introduces his new film—a 2006 concert rendition of Lou Reed’s 1973 album Berlin—by saying, “I felt it to be the soundtrack of much of my life.” At first that’s an alarming personal confession (from anyone other than Hedwig and the Angry Inch). But it’s also rare when a visual artist acknowledges that pop music enters his or her experience at all. In contrast, the new film version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!—itself a stage adaptation of the Swedish pop group ABBA’s globe-conquering song catalog—seems to be made by people who have no instinctive connection to pop music. These two films are fascinating examples of cultural crossover. Both adaptations reveal what impact pop music has on the aesthetics and sensibilities of filmmakers, pointing to a bigger issue: What meanings do people take from pop music?
Schnabel offers more than a performance document. Filmed pantomimes and experimental collages interweave the concert (backdrop projections and fantasy montage) to complement Reed’s concerto on drugs, sex, domestic violence, suicide and transcontinental low-lifes. There’s a green-robed children’s choir, two backup singers, a small orchestra and a rock ensemble, but it’s mainly a chance for Schnabel to illustrate—as in Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—an artist’s agony. For him, Berlin isn’t glam-rock nostalgia; it’s a still-relevant expression of the hell that he and Reed know people inflict on each other. Schnabel calls it “Love’s darker sisters: rage, jealousy, loss.”
Mamma Mia! has similar themes (ABBA’s exuberant songs are ironically about desire, heartbreak and lonely anguish), but director Phyllida Lloyd’s sun-bright setting on the azure coast of Greece turns darkness to light. Lloyd’s background as an opera director in England might explain this uncinematic debut (despite many exterior scenes, everything’s a mite stagy). But it’s even more baffling that the songs are performed as circusy tumbling and broad-faced burlesque. Mamma Mia!’s plot recalls the 1969 movie Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell: Love child Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) invites three men who might be her father to her wedding without telling her free-spirited mother Donna (Meryl Streep). The complications that ensue—Sophie’s Choice—are false forced farce. But that music (faithfully arranged by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus) bestows joy.
The smart money says Lou Reed’s song-cycle is deeper, because it’s sorrowful, self-serious and probes depression. But while Berlin’s art-rock intensity may work for initiates, Mamma Mia!’s cheerfulness has an irresistibly awesome effect. It’s the old rock vs. pop schism.
Schnabel is not exactly the ideal interpreter of Lou Reed’s Berlin-years anguish. And the Berlin songs themselves (the seemingly at-hand rhymes that communicate mental weakness, the genuine musicianship alongside Reed’s frail, yet harsh, vocals) don’t transport one into that experience so much as convey a once-novel attitude. Schnabel never achieves the profound sense of an artist redefining his past as did Jonathan Demme’s felicitous concert in Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Instead, Berlin is a downtown version of an “And-then-I-wrote” show. Reed revisits his private Eurotrash sojourn that helped create the rock vernacular. (At least Schnabel’s effects restore the sincerity missing from Todd Haynes’ vile Lou Reed references in Velvet Goldmine.) The years-later addition of a children’s chorus demonstrates how early-1970s audacity has become mundane. Berlin remains as unsettling as it is fascinating. It’s a survivor’s chronicle. Reed’s musicianship sustained him through chaos and self-destruction. He’s lived long enough to snatch back the hard-earned wisdom he had carved out of youthful recklessness, but there’s no sense of what he’s learned since—which made Demme’s Neil Young film transcendent. Schnabel’s best idea is commemorative: superimposing a single shot of the young blond Lou; it’s both experimental art-cinema and a moral apparition.
Meanwhile, Mamma Mia! communicates ABBA’s high-strung, euphoric, American-pop artifice. Though it’s amusing to see Streep show the cart-wheeling vitality of her musical-theater legend, Mamma Mia! desperately shifts between theater gimmick and pop celebration. This plot could have been about Russian spies poisoning an operative so long as we get to hear the propulsive, ecstatic harmonies of “Voulez Vous,” “Take A Chance on Me” and the immortal “Dancing Queen.” Unlike Reed and Schnabel’s artsy solipsism, ABBA’s tunes contain the glory of pop discourse. Frankly, it’s banal when Donna and her longtime gal pals Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters) literalize the lyrics; but whenever characters sing in groups—or Greek-peasant choruses—it fulfills the wonder of ABBA’s multi-tracked coloratura soprano harmonies.
These songs need to be sung out loud—in community. It vindicates the generation for whom pop was, indeed, the soundtrack of their lives. This blends with Schnabel’s admiration for Berlin—expressing the pop-era certainty that listeners can indeed define themselves through pop songs, light or dark. Watching every character sing “Dancing Queen” goes beyond a tourist-theater gimmick. Andersson and Ulvaeus’ glorious arrangement sends something through you—song, rhythm, our common emotional history.
Berlin, of course, is about the ugliness people don’t like to share. Reed’s performance of “Caroline Says,” “Rock Minuet” and “Sweet Jane” articulate recognizable private miseries. Can’t say Schnabel does more than rubber-stamp Reed’s vision, but seeing Reed’s rapport with his musicians (especially knit-cap guitarist and MVP Rob Wasserman) conveys some basic honesty. In this concert Reed resurrects a better moment than his silly, “political,” racist New York album of 1989. Berlin explores decadence knowingly—without the narcissism that today runs through the tainted work of Gus Van Sant or Neil LaBute. Clearly, most artists influenced by Reed have failed to heed Berlin’s warnings. His syllogism in “Men of Good Fortune” (“Men of good fortune/ Men of poor beginnings”) contains an awareness of class that few contemporary artists possess. The downside of Schnabel’s film is that his pictorial additions (footage by his daughter Lola and filmmaker Alejandro Garmendia) tend to fetishize Berlin’s degenerate surface. Images of a blonde’s open mouth with rubbed, worn lipstick smudges merely eroticize perversion. Against this, Reed’s colloquial rhymes work their hardest.
Essayist Charles O’Brien once outlined musicological parallels between ABBA and Mozart, and he was right to do so. Mamma Mia!’s chirpy songs express many intricate emotional complications through balanced, egalitarian musical epiphanies. “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” and “Does Your Mother Know” say as much about heterosexual affairs as about gay experience. That’s why ABBA’s catalog joined the disco revolution and eventually influenced the radical pop of Erasure. It’s an all-purpose, celebratory template—a high point of modern expression. Too bad Schnabel and Reed can’t access that kind of joy. Too bad Phyllida Lloyd doesn’t have Ken Russell’s genius for fantasy montage. P.J. Hogan (director of the ABBA-esque films Muriel’s Wedding, Unconditional Love and My Best Friend’s Wedding) would have been ideal.
Evaluating Berlin and Mamma Mia! comes down to appreciating Reed’s melancholy persona or Streep’s flamboyance. Music allows Streep to transcend her lofty self. Her “Winner Takes It All” solo—as a woman assessing her lovelorn life—challenges Reed’s confrontation with rage, jealousy and loss. The torch song brings out Streep’s ambition. She grasps ABBA’s eloquence, and her artistry conveys pop’s significance through the way Donna confronts a faithless lover by rolling her hips—powerfully—and singing full out. Yes, it’s a Streepologue like in the ’80s—her best since Kramer vs. Kramer, and strong like her “He’s Me Pal” vocals in Ironweed. Finally, somebody in Mamma Mia! takes ABBA’s emotions seriously. This extravagant sentimentality beats art-rock solemnity any day.
Directed by Julian Schnabel
at Film Forum
Mamma Mia!
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Julian Schnabel introduces his new film—a 2006 concert rendition of Lou Reed’s 1973 album Berlin—by saying, “I felt it to be the soundtrack of much of my life.” At first that’s an alarming personal confession (from anyone other than Hedwig and the Angry Inch). But it’s also rare when a visual artist acknowledges that pop music enters his or her experience at all. In contrast, the new film version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!—itself a stage adaptation of the Swedish pop group ABBA’s globe-conquering song catalog—seems to be made by people who have no instinctive connection to pop music. These two films are fascinating examples of cultural crossover. Both adaptations reveal what impact pop music has on the aesthetics and sensibilities of filmmakers, pointing to a bigger issue: What meanings do people take from pop music?
Schnabel offers more than a performance document. Filmed pantomimes and experimental collages interweave the concert (backdrop projections and fantasy montage) to complement Reed’s concerto on drugs, sex, domestic violence, suicide and transcontinental low-lifes. There’s a green-robed children’s choir, two backup singers, a small orchestra and a rock ensemble, but it’s mainly a chance for Schnabel to illustrate—as in Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—an artist’s agony. For him, Berlin isn’t glam-rock nostalgia; it’s a still-relevant expression of the hell that he and Reed know people inflict on each other. Schnabel calls it “Love’s darker sisters: rage, jealousy, loss.”
Mamma Mia! has similar themes (ABBA’s exuberant songs are ironically about desire, heartbreak and lonely anguish), but director Phyllida Lloyd’s sun-bright setting on the azure coast of Greece turns darkness to light. Lloyd’s background as an opera director in England might explain this uncinematic debut (despite many exterior scenes, everything’s a mite stagy). But it’s even more baffling that the songs are performed as circusy tumbling and broad-faced burlesque. Mamma Mia!’s plot recalls the 1969 movie Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell: Love child Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) invites three men who might be her father to her wedding without telling her free-spirited mother Donna (Meryl Streep). The complications that ensue—Sophie’s Choice—are false forced farce. But that music (faithfully arranged by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus) bestows joy.
The smart money says Lou Reed’s song-cycle is deeper, because it’s sorrowful, self-serious and probes depression. But while Berlin’s art-rock intensity may work for initiates, Mamma Mia!’s cheerfulness has an irresistibly awesome effect. It’s the old rock vs. pop schism.
Schnabel is not exactly the ideal interpreter of Lou Reed’s Berlin-years anguish. And the Berlin songs themselves (the seemingly at-hand rhymes that communicate mental weakness, the genuine musicianship alongside Reed’s frail, yet harsh, vocals) don’t transport one into that experience so much as convey a once-novel attitude. Schnabel never achieves the profound sense of an artist redefining his past as did Jonathan Demme’s felicitous concert in Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Instead, Berlin is a downtown version of an “And-then-I-wrote” show. Reed revisits his private Eurotrash sojourn that helped create the rock vernacular. (At least Schnabel’s effects restore the sincerity missing from Todd Haynes’ vile Lou Reed references in Velvet Goldmine.) The years-later addition of a children’s chorus demonstrates how early-1970s audacity has become mundane. Berlin remains as unsettling as it is fascinating. It’s a survivor’s chronicle. Reed’s musicianship sustained him through chaos and self-destruction. He’s lived long enough to snatch back the hard-earned wisdom he had carved out of youthful recklessness, but there’s no sense of what he’s learned since—which made Demme’s Neil Young film transcendent. Schnabel’s best idea is commemorative: superimposing a single shot of the young blond Lou; it’s both experimental art-cinema and a moral apparition.
Meanwhile, Mamma Mia! communicates ABBA’s high-strung, euphoric, American-pop artifice. Though it’s amusing to see Streep show the cart-wheeling vitality of her musical-theater legend, Mamma Mia! desperately shifts between theater gimmick and pop celebration. This plot could have been about Russian spies poisoning an operative so long as we get to hear the propulsive, ecstatic harmonies of “Voulez Vous,” “Take A Chance on Me” and the immortal “Dancing Queen.” Unlike Reed and Schnabel’s artsy solipsism, ABBA’s tunes contain the glory of pop discourse. Frankly, it’s banal when Donna and her longtime gal pals Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters) literalize the lyrics; but whenever characters sing in groups—or Greek-peasant choruses—it fulfills the wonder of ABBA’s multi-tracked coloratura soprano harmonies.
These songs need to be sung out loud—in community. It vindicates the generation for whom pop was, indeed, the soundtrack of their lives. This blends with Schnabel’s admiration for Berlin—expressing the pop-era certainty that listeners can indeed define themselves through pop songs, light or dark. Watching every character sing “Dancing Queen” goes beyond a tourist-theater gimmick. Andersson and Ulvaeus’ glorious arrangement sends something through you—song, rhythm, our common emotional history.
Berlin, of course, is about the ugliness people don’t like to share. Reed’s performance of “Caroline Says,” “Rock Minuet” and “Sweet Jane” articulate recognizable private miseries. Can’t say Schnabel does more than rubber-stamp Reed’s vision, but seeing Reed’s rapport with his musicians (especially knit-cap guitarist and MVP Rob Wasserman) conveys some basic honesty. In this concert Reed resurrects a better moment than his silly, “political,” racist New York album of 1989. Berlin explores decadence knowingly—without the narcissism that today runs through the tainted work of Gus Van Sant or Neil LaBute. Clearly, most artists influenced by Reed have failed to heed Berlin’s warnings. His syllogism in “Men of Good Fortune” (“Men of good fortune/ Men of poor beginnings”) contains an awareness of class that few contemporary artists possess. The downside of Schnabel’s film is that his pictorial additions (footage by his daughter Lola and filmmaker Alejandro Garmendia) tend to fetishize Berlin’s degenerate surface. Images of a blonde’s open mouth with rubbed, worn lipstick smudges merely eroticize perversion. Against this, Reed’s colloquial rhymes work their hardest.
Essayist Charles O’Brien once outlined musicological parallels between ABBA and Mozart, and he was right to do so. Mamma Mia!’s chirpy songs express many intricate emotional complications through balanced, egalitarian musical epiphanies. “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” and “Does Your Mother Know” say as much about heterosexual affairs as about gay experience. That’s why ABBA’s catalog joined the disco revolution and eventually influenced the radical pop of Erasure. It’s an all-purpose, celebratory template—a high point of modern expression. Too bad Schnabel and Reed can’t access that kind of joy. Too bad Phyllida Lloyd doesn’t have Ken Russell’s genius for fantasy montage. P.J. Hogan (director of the ABBA-esque films Muriel’s Wedding, Unconditional Love and My Best Friend’s Wedding) would have been ideal.
Evaluating Berlin and Mamma Mia! comes down to appreciating Reed’s melancholy persona or Streep’s flamboyance. Music allows Streep to transcend her lofty self. Her “Winner Takes It All” solo—as a woman assessing her lovelorn life—challenges Reed’s confrontation with rage, jealousy and loss. The torch song brings out Streep’s ambition. She grasps ABBA’s eloquence, and her artistry conveys pop’s significance through the way Donna confronts a faithless lover by rolling her hips—powerfully—and singing full out. Yes, it’s a Streepologue like in the ’80s—her best since Kramer vs. Kramer, and strong like her “He’s Me Pal” vocals in Ironweed. Finally, somebody in Mamma Mia! takes ABBA’s emotions seriously. This extravagant sentimentality beats art-rock solemnity any day.
