Fade Out

Our correspondent Lionfish checks in to sharply disagree with our generous review of "Not Fade Away":

I admire your search for a higher purpose for this film . . . but its treatment of Vietnam seemed trivial and callous. Many plodding scenes add up to the following life lesson: It seemed sort of cool to be a soldier, but only until the war ramped up, because it’s not so cool to kill people, and no one with a lick of common sense wants to risk getting killed. The drummer turned sniper only got two lines of dialogue, and only drew a vaguely disgusted yawn from his friends. 

Smart people didn’t have to worry about the draft for a minute. They scored extra cool and noble points by turning their apathy into a statement about WWII discrimination against black soldiers and the massacre of women and children. That was the smart way to make a stand on race and war issues; it kept people free from the trouble of actually marching anywhere, or, God forbid, writing ridiculous protest songs.

I am pretty sure the writer/director is glorifying his own experience rather than providing any perspective. He is too busy demonstrating how his buddies and he perfectly embodied the 1960s, how they perhaps even helped define the decade in their small lovable way. How cool they were to have long hair, to smoke pot a lot, to love the Beatles, Dylan and the Stones, to piss off their neurotic 1950s moms and dads. He’s giving us every cliché and basically saying he had it right, ‘cos everyone knows so today. Oh, and he was especially, personally cool for overcoming his dorky looks, for listening to a handful of blues artists, for knowing a crazy girl who made it to the Village at just the right time, and for showing up at some Hollywood party where, he implies, his girlfriend might have blown Mick Jagger in the bathroom. 

There is no hint of self-criticism, just barely a knowing wink to the effect of, "glad the hair/shoes/Dostoyevsky references were just a phase." The boys’ half-hearted pursuit of a music career was filmed very seriously. When the band played, I could hear old geeks battling for days in meetings that started with – “Guys, this has to sound like the best mix there ever could have been of [insert above-mentioned icons] . . . played on [insert list of vintage equipment] . . . Go!!." They might insist that the soundtrack and the band member dynamics are what matter most in this movie. The writer mercifully acknowledges that his band wasn’t actually all that talented, and that failure was inevitable -- but only to make the point that his film is not simply a vanity project, it is The Absolute Defining Experience of His Generation. I thought it was simply pompous and boorish.

I am glad he had fun, despite the low self-esteem and band arguments he solemnly exposes us to. He went on to become a big-time Hollywood writer using his big Italian family for material. Good for him. That hardly makes the film a morality tale, or an insightful history lesson for us, since we’ve already heard those particular tales of the sixties ad nauseam. 

Sadly, it’s bound to become a history lesson anyway. The tiny flashes of JFK, MLK and Vietnam archival footage will give many a teacher an excuse to play that DVD to their students instead of lecturing them for two hours. It will be no surprise if the decade’s dramatic events keep fading away in the minds of kids, and if what those kids relate to the best is the growing domination of a kitschy and self-indulgent subculture.

GRADE: D+