The Agony and The Ecstasy of Phil Spector is a very complicated documentary about the great music producer, the early part and heyday of his career and the amazing music he wrote and produced, all set over the background of his recent murder trial. Annoyingly the film does not really do a full treatment of any of these aspects to items and we are left with a bit of a biodoc, a bit of a historical look at the music scene in the '60s and '70s and a bit of a doc about the trial. None of these parts really come out as a main focus of the piece, which is very frustrating.
Most of the film is an interview with Spector done in his LA home around the time of his first trial in 2007. He generally speaks frankly about how he got into writing and performing music and his thoughts on some performers (he seems to weirdly hate Tony Bennett and has mixed, but somewhat bitter feelings about Bob Dylan). We see chronologically how he moved along writing primarily teeny pop songs about love and breakups and marriage and how he ultimately hooked up with bigger stars like the Beatles.
As we hear him talk about each song we hear that song played in the background and sometimes see footage of the performer singing it. As this is happening, we see a critic's take on each song, describing the sound and the broader impact of the music in the greater recording world.
Meanwhile, as these things are happening, we see clips from the courtroom video tape recordings of his murder trial. In many cases we see the music subtitles beneath the trial scenes - sometimes we see the subtitles as the song is playing over people talking during the trial.
To say this is an ineffective way of presenting material would be an understatement. It is basically impossible to get all the information presented (at least in the theater - at home on DVD, it might be easier). To make matters even more complicated, most of the critical subtitles come on the screen for a very short time so that even if you are only reading the titles, it is still hard to get through the whole thing before it is off the screen.
By far the highlight of the film are Ike and Tina Turner (well, really just Tina) performing the song Mountain High, River Deep on stage. Tina kills the song - she's amazing. I have never seen this footage before. She is so good here it reminds me of her amazing performance in the Maysels' film Gimme Shelter of I've Been Loving You So Long, where she equally steals the show and leaves us gasping for air. She's an amazing talent. (Spector weirdly seems to take some credit for her, which makes no sense at all).
One other very funny moment in the film is when Spector talks about his i
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment