Linger On

 

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (A) - It seems to be a good year for improbable directors of music documentaries focused on the late Sixties. A few months ago there was "Summer of Soul" from Roots drummer Questlove, and later this month Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") will present his re-imagining of the Beatles' "Let It Be" sessions. Here, persnickety dramatic auteur Todd Haynes ("Carol") curates a faithful definitive biography of avant-garde rock darlings the Velvet Underground.

Haynes crafts a heartfelt homage to the influential band, mixing the good qualities with the bad (mainly that Lou Reed seemed to be a drug addict and asshole). He sticks to the band's productive years and skips the post-breakup aura that has predominated for the past half century. Instead, he tosses you back to those heady days when the boundaries of art and music seemed limitless.

And Haynes uses every trick in his own art-house arsenal to fill the screen with dazzling visuals for two nonstop hours of deep-dive nostalgia and character study fueled by songs that have lost little, if any, urgency over the decades. It's a dizzying, delirious trip down memory lane. And it's about as entertaining as a movie can be. 

The director takes a little time at first sketching in the boyhoods of Reed and his better half, the violist John Cale. Reed has the rougher upbringing and seemed to be, from the start, dead set on becoming a rock 'n' roll star, in contrast with Cale's more classical, refined background. Reed's sister is onboard as a talking head. Also joining in is an original superfan, Jonathan Richman, who would be one of those proverbial Children of VU, part of an army of followers said to have gone on to form their own band (his was the Roadrunners). Cale and drummer Maureen Tucker, both looking elegant, are still around to offer their perspectives.

Haynes launches headfirst into the New York City scene of the mid-'60s, where Andy Warhol "discovered" the band and turned them into an avant-garde art project, improbably matching the band with the German anti-chanteuse Nico.  This led to their first album, which probably scores highest ever on a discrepancy scale measuring the delta between so few copies originally sold and such a high ranking among the greatest records made. 

The film takes a detour during the hippie heyday with footage of the band taking a trip to California and blinking into the sun as if finally released from a crypt. L.A. and San Francisco just wasn't their scene; as Tucker put it, they had little patience for "that peace and love shit." The band, true to its name, was a real underground phenomenon. Warhol's patronage allowed Reed and Cale to go deep into musical indulgences, exploring both adventurous sounds and taboo subjects with their music and lyrics. (Check out the reconciled pair's homage to Warhol, "Songs for Drella" from 1990.)

Warhol Factory member Mary Woronov leads the pack among talking heads who aptly place the band in context and bring the past to life. Meantime, Haynes splashes the screen with images, not only of the band and its performances, but with random stock footage that provides further era authenticity. He splits the screen often, sometimes using archival footage of the band members staring inertly at the screen while the other side involves mayhem, as if mimicking or subverting Warhol's own film style. The effect of so many images can be overwhelming, but the solution is to pick out what you can and let the rest wash over you.

In the end, the real draw here is the music. The band put out four proper studio albums with the core group between 1967 and 1970 -- two with Cale and two with his replacement, Doug Yule -- and the sheer power of the songs resonates here from beginning to end. They sound fresh and daring to this day. For two hours, you can get lost in the reverie of the artistry of a truly original band.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailer will give you a feel for the kinetic energy:

Let's do some covers, starting with the Cowboy Junkies' slow-jam to "Sweet Jane":

The Beat Farmers with "There She Goes Again"

R.E.M., from the mid-'80s, with "Pale Blue Eyes," our title track: