What surprises is the rare footage Haynes dutifully excavated, including Cale’s pre-VU I've Got a Secret appearance. Especially considering how little footage of the Velvet Underground exists. Haynes brilliantly matches the visuals with the subject and its art. No band abraded assaultive noise and poetic beauty like the Velvet Underground. The naysaying misses how all that visual noise – split screens, manipulated stock footage, Lou Reed and John Cale’s static Warhol screen tests contrasted with audio interviews and scenes of their environment – perfectly illustrates the Velvets’ lo-fi aural screech and somber meditations. His stature and excellent onscreen summations of the day’s downtown demimonde nets him a closing credits dedication.
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We’re talking the movie vocabulary of Jack Smith, Velvets patron Andy Warhol, or the late Jonas Mekas. Here, he utilizes early-to-mid-Sixties New York experimental film techniques in telling this story. Haynes made some of cinematic history’s most controversial-if-effective outré rock hagiography: glam odyssey Velvet Goldmine, off-center Bob Dylan “biopic” I’m Not There. Most nastiness seems directed at the film’s format.
Ask David Bowie, Jonathan Richman (a teenage Velvets devotee interviewed herein), Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, most every early NYC punk act, Sonic Youth, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club … or locals the Black Angels, named for a song on the first VU album. Most notices read like a younger generation flexing its muscles, dismissing historically significant culture simply out of a misguided notion of Youth Asserting Itself: “Oh, this is from the past?! Never heard of them! Who cares?!” But the simple fact of the matter is: The Velvet Underground invented glam/punk/indie/noise in the Sixties, with more aplomb and ability than anyone attempting to stride in their Cuban-heeled wake to this day.
Curious, the tepid-to-bad reviews filtering from Cannes this past summer over The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes’ cinematic valentine to underground rock’s most influential band.