The Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine, a film about the tumultuous story of Glam Rock, starts strangely enough in 1854, when a UFO strews stardust over a moonlit Ireland. The mystery doesn’t take long to unravel: 1854 was the year when Oscar Wilde was born. A few years later, when asked as a prep-school boy what he would like to grow up to be, he answered: ‘Pop star’. Todd Haynes’ ambitious film plays for high stakes and reaches to the stars. At the core are Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyer) and Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor). Slade is a kind of cocktail with a stiff mix of Bowie, a shot of Steve Harley and a twinge of Gavin Friday. Wild, on the other hand, is based on Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, finished with a twist of Kurt Cobain. For the popconnoisseur, the film is dotted with famous anecdotes from the early seventies. The main thread in Velvet Goldmine is a British editor who is commissioned in 1984 in New York to write an anniversary article on the staged murder of Slade, that would lead to his downfall. This editor turns out to have been more than a fanatical fan of Slade.While the polyphony of the screenplay and the compilation of the soundtrack can be called a true tour de force, the visual inventiveness is boundless. Songs for which music videos were never made get belated ones and in addition, Haynes quotes from his own Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, in which Barbie dolls play the lead.