It is of some interest that his girlfriend invented the famous haircuts. It is indeed ironic that a young man named Stuart Sutcliffe might have been a billionaire rock star, but instead dropped dead in the flower of his youth and became an answer in Trivial Pursuit. The actors playing McCartney and Harrison are used primarily as a chorus, advising Lennon to drop Sutcliffe, and Pete Best is hardly seen (not, I hope, because there is also a movie in his story).Īt the end, I felt cheated. Ian Hart, who plays John Lennon, looks uncannily like Julian Lennon and speaks in a harsher tone than Lennon had, but he is a good actor who has played Lennon before (in "The Days and Hours," another speculation about his bisexuality), and his dialogue has real wit. The music in the movie is fun to listen to (the Beatles version of "Mister Postman" is droll). This in itself could make a good movie, but only if the story pulled its own weight, and didn't hitch a ride on the Beatles legend. Well, unless the filmmakers had brought their own imaginations to the material, and seen something valid and original in the story of five young men in a rock band, trying to break loose from the crowd, while one of them thinks he would rather be a painter. What all of this demonstrates is that hindsight is everything if the Beatles had not become famous, neither Sutcliffe's story nor the story of the band in Hamburg would have been worth filming, unless. This irony does not go unremarked by the movie's dialogue, which even has Sutcliffe being told, "We're going to be big - really big - and you're gonna kick yourself for missing out." There is also an attempt to show what made the Beatles special, even from the beginning a lot of early songs by the Beatles and others are performed by the band (dubbed by veteran rock performers). Whatever caused his death, Sutcliffe died too young to be of enough interest for a biopic - except, of course, that he just missed becoming famous as a Beatle. In the movie, the kick to the head comes in a pub brawl. Albert Goldman's book about Lennon contends that Lennon kicked Sutcliffe in the head during a drunken fight, and was guilt-ridden for years with the thought that the kick might have led to the hemorrhage some two years later. They are not especially interesting, although perhaps he might have developed if he had not died so young. Many of his paintings can be seen in the film. Nor did he have the joy of performance that is so obvious in early films like " A Hard Day's Night." He was more introspective, and what suited him was to paint large abstract canvasses in Astrid's apartment, and discuss painting and photography with her. It would appear, on the basis of this film, that Sutcliffe would not have the musical talent to keep up with the others. That they had extraordinary talent made them enduring. When Astrid replaced the ducktails with the Beatles cut, she created an image that was to become instantly marketable if the Beatles had only had The Look and the early records, they still would have been big stars. The other Beatles wanted to look more like Elvis. Sutcliffe ( Stephen Dorff) somewhat resembled James Dean, and it was probably Astrid's haircut for her boyfriend - modeled on her own - that influenced the original moptop look. It wants to make Stuart Sutcliffe the focus of the film, and it's never able to convince us there's a story there. It is a good story, but it isn't the one "Backbeat" wants to tell. The story of the early days of the Beatles is the stuff of folklore how they discovered their sound in the smoky dives of Hamburg, how the producer George Martin masterminded their early great records, how they become the most famous performers in the world, almost overnight. A bigger problem was that he simply didn't much care about being in a rock and roll band, and stayed as long as he did only because of Lennon's insistence. They believed he was a bad musician, and Sutcliffe agreed with them. The other Beatles (George, Paul, and Pete Best, who was then the drummer instead of Ringo Starr) weren't so thrilled with Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe's best friend in the band was John Lennon, and the film suggests, subtly, that Lennon was in love with him, and maybe with Astrid, too. There is a lot more to the story than that, of course, and "Backbeat" makes the most of it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |