It’s chronological and straightforward, in a way, but it also sneaks up on you and surrounds you with sheer sound - forget the lyrics to “Heroin,” this movie will remind you just how extreme the song was musically. That immersive nature is the real key to the film, which uses split screens, purposefully jarring edits and lengthy shots from old Warhol movies of the band members simply staring into the camera. But the movie feels no need for the usual trick of opening a rock-doc with a parade of people testifying to the genius of what we’re about to see instead, he trusts the audience to recognize it if they see it, hear it and are immersed in it. ![]() In one way, “The Velvet Underground” is an exemplary doc, doing a virtuoso job of weaving archival footage, still photos and talking heads into a freewheeling trip through the band’s world. (It’s hard not to wonder if Martin Scorsese wasn’t inspired by Haynes when he made his 2019 film “Rolling Thunder Revue,” which purported to be a documentary about Dylan’s 1976 tour but was, in fact, a fictional reimagining of it.)Īnd now Haynes has turned to the documentary form himself. “I’m Not There” was a brilliantly kaleidoscopic deconstruction of Dylan that captured the spirit of the mercurial genius better than any straightforward account could. He went on to make 1998’s “Velvet Goldmine,” a striking and nervy exploration of the ’70s glam-rock scene based around fictional characters inspired by David Bowie and Iggy Pop and 2007’s “I’m Not There,” in which he made a movie about Bob Dylan by using six different actors to play personas inspired by events in Dylan’s life and in his work. That shouldn’t come as a surprise for a director whose first film, the unsettling and original “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” was a wholly unauthorized telling of the late singer’s story that used Barbie dolls instead of actors. It’s a dark, disturbing and glorious film about a dark, disturbing and glorious band, and another sign that Haynes knows how to put music onscreen in a way that few other directors do. ![]() But “The Velvet Underground,” which premiered in an out-of-competition slot at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t spend too much time trying to persuade us why we should care about Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, or walking us through their career - instead, it somehow manages to burrow inside them and their music.
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