Cannes Film Festival 2021: Todd Haynes docu on The Velvet Underground shows a band defiant of artistic, cultural norms
Firstpost is physically present at Cannes Film Festival 2021. We will bring you exclusive coverage from the annual gala, including reviews and all the activities taking place on ground.
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What is the relevance of a rebellious, anti-hippie, glam rock band from the 60s New York today? The band in question, The Velvet Underground, was unafraid to sing about drugs and sex blending it with identity and belonging but was never promoted in the radio because of their explosive lyrics.
“I think it’s something we want to remind people about,” said director Todd Haynes who helmed the soon-to-be-out Apple TV documentary that premiered on the Croisette this week. “Because there isn’t a sense of wanting to resist capitalist forces [or nurture] the ubiquitous ideas of rebellion and a desire to make your own rules [these days],” he added, speaking on the sidelines of the festival.
The auteur’s new documentary about The Velvet Underground, a band that was so norm-breaking in the 60s New York, Bob Dylan managed them. Other than it produced inimitable talents like Lou Reed, Nico, MoTucker and John Cale after it split, the documentary investigates the ideals of The Velvet Underground and shows a band defiant of existing artistic and cultural norms.
It’s a doozy for Velvet heads but for music enthusiasts in other parts of the globe who’ve only heard the band’s name in passing, it’s a brilliantly immersive experience, one that captures the moment in New York history when rock was art and Andy Warhol was its conductor for a brief moment because he was moving from visual art to film and also believed the band’s music sounded like his paintings.
In surviving team member’s words, Lou Reed, the lead singer songwriter, emerges as a tortured genius and an artist with unquenchable thirst, who is constantly mining material for his work by setting up scenarios like asking a straight woman friend to dance with girls in a lesbian bar. Haynes spends much time in telling us how the band crystallized into a glam rock force in New York's Avant Garde art scene in the 1960s.
It’s also as much a portrait of Reed who has been the force, binding the band together as well as threatening to split it open, during its existence. As emotionally inaccessible and volatile Reed was - he was subjected to shock therapy for his homosexuality when he was young - his raw talent was also simply irresistible.
“Boys and girls, women and men, fell in love with Lou. Nico was in love with Lou. Andy was in love with Lou,” remembers drummer Moe Tucker who acted as a peacemaker between John Cale and Reed when things got out of hand between them, according to Haynes.
John Cale’s significant presence in the film throws light into the rebellious vision of the band. His earlier performance pieces - before he was inducted into the band - featured him taking an axe to a piano. At Velvet Underground, he became a crucial member but things weren’t always rosy. Cale recalls how desperately he wanted to avoid conflict with Reed. “I really didn’t know how to please him. You try and be nice, he’d hate you more.” Soon he would be ousted by Reed.
Yet for all the focus on the internal turmoil the band was constantly teetering on the edge of, as Haynes himself said, “It’s not a sex, drug and rock and roll gossip movie. We really wanted to embrace the cultural life of New York City and the deep and complicated history of Avant Garde cinema to visualise in a film.”
Even as Reed in his physical absence is a significant presence in the documentary, Haynes lays emphasis on the band’s collective relevance. “It really was a band, it wasn’t just a single voice, every member of that band, particularly on that first record, was essential to the sound. So how they all found each other, the miracle of all these different people from all these different places landing in NYC at that one moment and ending up with this music is something we really wanted to excavate and do it in the context of this absolutely unique artistic moment in New York life.”
Haynes’s work has been shaped by ideas of gender, identity and the conflict of breaking social norms all along. In The Velvet Underground, he has found a fertile subject. In Haynes’ expert hands, the documentary - distilled from hours of fresh interviews and archival footage - serves as a vital primer to the band’s historic and present-day relevance, even as it’s a hauntingly beautiful glimpse into Lou Reed’s persona.
by Prathap Nair
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