In 1975, a full six years before the existence of MTV and two years before Saturday Night Fever propelled disco to the forefront of pop culture, director Ken Russell (who had previously trained his by-then trademark grandiloquent eye almost exclusively on the lives of classical composers), created what was essentially a 2-hour music video. Part Scopitone cheese-fest, surrealist fever-dream, theater of the absurd, and post-60s drug-addled freak-out; Ken Russell's 100% assault on the senses was the self-proclaimed rock-opera, Tommy.
Ann-Margret as Nora Walker |
Oliver Reed as Frank Hobbs |
Roger Daltrey as Tommy Walker |
Not since that atheist genius of contemporary nihilism, Roman Polanski, was assigned to the darkly cynical Rosemary's Baby has there been a more perfect match of director and subject. Ken Russell's theatrically baroque, visual-heavy style was ideally suited to a tale of such broad-strokes bombast as Tommy. Marketed as an experience as much as a movie, Tommy boasted rock-concert-decibel-level sound (the five-speaker Quintaphonic sound system that rattled movie theater rafters every bit as much as Earthquake's Sensurround), a story told entirely in song and music; and a mind-blowing, only-in-the-70s cast of pop/rock musicians and movie stars. But best of all, Tommy had at its helm a director who was a master of just the sort of bizarre, over-the-top weirdness rock music demanded. Tommy was poised as a '70s happening, and it didn't disappoint.
Above all, I was impressed by the film's phenomenally offbeat casting choices.
Above all, I was impressed by the film's phenomenally offbeat casting choices.
Jack Nicholson as The Doctor |
Tina Turner as The Acid Queen |
Elton John as The Pinball Wizard |
Significantly retooled from the 1969 double album by The Who, Tommy is a quasi-spiritual parable about a boy (Barry Winch) rendered hysterically deaf, dumb, and blind after witnessing the murder of his father (Robert Powell) at the hands of his mother's lover (Oliver Reed).
Witness to the Murder Seriously, who wouldn't be rendered deaf, dumb, and blind by this? |
While shared guilt tears at the fibers of the marriage of Nora (Ann-Margret) and Frank (Reed) - Nora, in particular, grapples with remorse over what she has done - the now-grown Tommy (Daltrey) retreats further and further into himself, inhabiting a vivid inner world which serves to shield him from the trauma of well-intentioned cure attempts and instances of parental neglect and familial abuse. As a result of his experiences, Tommy develops a near-supernatural talent for pinball and is hailed as a pop culture prodigy.
For Nora, instant wealth and fame superficially cushion the pain of the responsibility she feels for Tommy's afflictions. But when her hysterics bring about his "accidental" fall through a plate-glass mirror, the miraculous restoration of his senses changes the course of her life. Tommy instantly becomes a worldwide spiritual messiah but finds the world of redemption through material acquisition to be just another form of existential prison.
For a treatise on fame addiction, pop-spirituality, drugs, child abuse, and family dysfunction, five seasons of "Oprah" couldn't accomplish what Ken Russell does in two hours. In song, yet! Classical music fan Russell, known to some as the King of Overkill, meets his match with Rock & Roll, which appears to have inspired him in ways few were prepared for in 1975. Always a director able to capture memorably vivid tableaux, Russell fills Tommy with striking and, in some instances, downright weird images and setpieces that, even today, feel as unexpected and mind-blowing as they did in 1975.
I Am The Light |
Nora & Captain Walker Tommy is credited to three cinematographers, I'm not sure who is responsible for this image, but it is one of my favorites in a film loaded with favorites |
Tommy is chock full of spheres, globe motifs, religious iconography, inside jokes, and Freudian symbolism. All this heavy-handed pretension was like manna for a high school film geek like me.
Robert Powell as Captain Walker |
Looking at the film now, it's hard for me to take it as seriously as I did way back when. But what does persist and becomes more apparent with each viewing is the obvious artistry on display and how much sheer outrageous fun it is to watch. So many movies today are all spectacle, with nary an idea in their heads. Ken Russell movies are so crammed full of ideas and subthemes that it frequently takes repeat viewings to even catch them all. Oh, and there's plenty of spectacle to spare, too.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
If Tommy were a western, it would be a western with Indians, covered wagons, the cavalry, and stagecoaches; were it a war film, it would have air strikes, tanks, battalions, and explosions every fifteen minutes. In short, Tommy is so much fun because it has too much of everything. The music is exhilarating (and loud), and the visuals are, in turn, brash, vulgar, and ingenious. Most movies have at least one setpiece scene; Tommy is ALL setpiece scenes. Under any other circumstances, this would be a recipe for a somewhat overwhelming viewing experience. But Ken Russell's operatic ambition and vastness of scope are so gleefully grandiose and overreaching I find Tommy to be just irresistible cinema.
Show Biz The "Pinball Wizard" sequence, featuring The Who and Elton John is combat as rock concert |
Satire Organized religion and fame culture is skewered in a jaw-dropping sequence set in a church worshiping Marilyn Monroe |
Surrealism Tommy in a landscape of giant pinballs and flaming pinball machines |
PERFORMANCES
The title role may belong to Roger Daltrey, but the film belongs to Ann-Margret. As Tommy's troubled mother (understatement), Ann-Margret seems to sense that this is the role of a lifetime and attacks it with a commitment and ferocity that comes from a place very real. Her performance is so compelling that she pulls off the Herculean feat of anchoring the entire film (which could have easily slid into campiness) in a kind of emotional truth.
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The pairing of the director of The Devils with the actress who stole an entire film from under Elvis Presley's nose was bound to produce a few sparks, but no one was prepared for the cinematic conflagration that was the "Champagne" musical number; popularly known as "The beans sequence." A song written expressly for the film, it communicates Nora's profound guilt, compounded by the riches and comfort that has come to her through Tommy's pinball success. In an attempt to blot out Tommy's image from both her mind and the television screen, which alternates close-ups of Tommy's staring, blameless eyes, with insipid commercials for baked beans, soap suds, and chocolate, Nora gets plastered. Everything comes to an emotional and visual head when Nora hallucinates the television set vomiting its material goods into her pristine white bedroom.
If you really want to see an actor going all out, nerves exposed and raw, you need look no further than Ann-Margret's Technicolor nervous breakdown in Tommy. Audacious isn't even the word. understandably, this scene was all critics could talk about when the film was released. Even today it stands as an example of virtuoso looniness of the most outrageous kind.
If you really want to see an actor going all out, nerves exposed and raw, you need look no further than Ann-Margret's Technicolor nervous breakdown in Tommy. Audacious isn't even the word. understandably, this scene was all critics could talk about when the film was released. Even today it stands as an example of virtuoso looniness of the most outrageous kind.
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
It's fascinating to me that a film propelled by wall-to-wall rock music is also so visually stimulating; I can imagine someone could watch it without sound and still find it to be an exciting and compelling motion picture. Ken Russell has a silent filmmaker's grasp of the visual rhythms of dramatic storytelling. He's always been a director known for letting images do the talking, and with Tommy, he comes the closest he's ever been to achieving pure cinema.
Tommy's Primary Color Triad of Trauma (The Acid Queen, Uncle Ernie, and Cousin Kevin) |
AUTOGRAPH FILES
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2010