![]() Because to us, the sixty-cycle hum was the drone of Western civilization.” On Haynes’s split screen: Cale himself, a view of New York pedestrians as seen from above crossing the street in a diagonal pattern, cars, apartment buildings, telephone poles, tall buildings. He speaks now about composing with the sound artist and critic Tony Conrad in an apartment on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side that Conrad (“I didn’t want to be part of the economy”) rented for $22.44 a month: “The most stable thing we could tune to was the sixty-cycle hum of the refrigerator. His secret was that he was one of eleven musicians to take part in an eighteen-hour, eight-hundred-and-forty-part performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations (with him on the show was Karl Schenzer, whose secret was that he sat through it). One pole is John Cale, first shown in footage of a 1963 episode of the CBS quiz show I’ve Got a Secret. Yet that doesn’t mean rooting through the tapes, the films, the photographs, the lives, the memories, trying to capture what it was all about, isn’t its own meaningful, mesmerizing exploration, and its own thing.Two poles of Todd Haynes’s documentary film on the Velvet Underground, a band-Lou Reed, principal singer and guitar John Cale, viola and other instruments Sterling Morrison, guitar Maureen “Moe” Tucker, drums-that formed in New York City in 1965, came under the sway of Andy Warhol and the denizens of his Factory, released its first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, in huge letters “PRODUCED BY ANDY WARHOL,” in 1967, its fourth and last, Loaded, in 1970, and disbanded that year, after Cale had already been excluded from the group in 1968: The spiritual truth of Haynes’ spellbinding “The Velvet Underground” is that ultimately it’s about the thing that can’t be described, that defies parsing when gifted outcasts make great art - it’s to be experienced. Haynes loves his subject(s) too much to revel in a juicy breakup, but more necessarily, it seems, he respects the abiding worth of collaboration, even when it’s a clash, and the lightning is short-lived. (Special mention to the reclusive Tucker for vocalizing the band’s hatred of the West Coast scene’s “peace and love crap” as still irritated.) But also, gripes don’t feel gossiped, and discord isn’t sensationalized, even as the band turned its disdain inward, morphed, then disintegrated. No one talks for too long, their memories and insights just enough to fill in the mosaic with a key psychological coloring or flash of personality. The cascade of imagery - from era-specific ads and the Warhol oeuvre to the work of counterculture gods Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Barbara Rubin and others - is hypnotically deployed, putting us in the mind-set of creatives who saw possibilities everywhere. In those fascinating contrasts they learned, says Cale, “how to be elegant and how to be brutal.”įoregrounding the movie visually is Haynes’ masterful use of a restless, size-shifting split screen as a language of juxtaposition, connection and time travel, from which the musical cues can either whisk us into a scene-setting mood or, as when we hear early versions of notable compositions, underscore the evolution of a song. They were also beneficiaries of an elevated, multi-disciplinary New York art scene with a clubby vibe. ![]() The seminal, churning tracks from their 1967 debut album with Warhol’s signed banana on the cover - “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Venus in Furs,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” with German chanteuse Nico’s androgynous moan alternating lead vocals with Reed - both entranced and shocked with a rough hum and spiky depictions of the cool, stark and dangerous. With Sterling Morrison on guitar and Moe Tucker on drums, the Velvets were a sonic manifesto as much as they were a band. ![]() Such is Todd Haynes’ sensory gem “The Velvet Underground,” about the notorious and influential Lou Reed/John Cale-led ‘60s rock outfit whose revelatory sounds, lyrics and Andy Warhol-mentored image helped define a radical era’s ecstatic transgressions. So many music documentaries today are machine-stamped plaques rewarding popularity and ego that when encountering a genuine film, a work of art about artists and artmaking, you’re jolted awake by what’s breathed into a slice of cultural history. Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials. The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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