In which Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach recycle their failed 30 minute Black Mirror idea and pad it out to a full two hour shaggy dog tale, of little or no consequence, whilst breaking the hearts of nine year old girls worldwide who flock in their millions to a movie that flies straight over their heads.
To be fair the first three minutes are awesome when they pastiche 2001 A Space Odyssey (but we’d already seen it in the trailer). And Margot Robbie is breathtakingly beautiful from start to finish.
Ryan Gosling’s faye Ken is, by contrast, just a bit annoying, (and to be fair, so is Robbie) but neither are as gratingly garbage as Will Ferrell and his bunch of Mattel men.
Other highlights include Billie Eillish’s stunningly gorgeous closing music which gets all existential on us.
The design is, to a point, quite fun but not consistently so and the morale of the story, or the political polemic about equal rights for women, does not fail to land, although it does so in a Groundhog sort of manner.
This is not a good movie. Gerwig, Baumback, Robbie and Gosling have all done significantly superior work. This is quite simply a bunch of talented people having a laugh and getting away with it.
Hats of to Mattel for allowing a lot of self deprecation on their part and to the profits it will have raised for their mighty corpioration.
When the Oscars come round I don’t think it will be Cillian Murphy that gets his shoulder tapped I think it could be Emily Blunt and Robert Downie Jr who plays Oppenheimer’s would be nemesis, Lewis Strauss. Don’t get me wrong, Murphy is good, just not truly great.
And that about sums up this overlong movie, good just not truly great.
The plot wriggles and writhes through timelines in such a way as to satisfy Nolan’s trademark need for complexity and I have to confess to being confused for much of its three hours.
Also, if I was watching this as a Japanese viewer I’d be gritting my teeth at the overall celebration of the outcome of Oppenheimer’s technical success. It treads a fine line between glorification and condemnation of the A Bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing over 200,000 Japanese civilians.
And while Nolan coaxes a degree of remorse out of his central character I wasn’t 100% convinced that he really did regret his actions. Sure he denounces them, to an extent, but he didn’t go into this in wide eyed innocence, Oppenheimer absolutely knew his objective. The ethics are pretty muddled, like a lot of the plot in my view.
Ach, it’s a hard one to deconstruct. I’m a little surprised at the ratings this movie is attracting because it’s a long hard slog with a LOT of dialogue and not a great deal of action.
Perhaps the best scenes are the test sequences in the desert, the senatorial election drama at the end and the creepy but well handled rabble rousing reception Oppenheimer receives from his team on the news that Hiroshima has been obliterated. At least in this scene Nolan convinces us that it’s not a celebration of the bombing, but an indictment.
Oppenheimer’s vilification as a possible Communist is a central theme of the movie and is key to Strauss’s objections and the 1954 kangaroo court FBI security clearance meeting which anchors the plot. There seems little evidence that he was a Commie, but the McCarthy regime at that time seemed to put little store in hard evidence and he clearly fared badly in this terrible stitch up.
Perhaps my favourite moment in the movie is the look of schadenfreude on the face of Strauss’s advisor towards the end of the movie.
It’s a delicious moment in a banquet that sadly has more plain fare than delicacies.
Not the best by a long way but plenty to get excited about.
Dry as a bone and with a mahoosive tent that I shared with my sister, Emily, it meant we were in relative comfort despite the constantly deflating airbed and the extreme heat of the Saturday (a pal of mine’s girlfriend had to go home with heat stroke).
We arrived, as usual, at 9.30 Thursday morning and really struggled to find a pitch in the Dairy Field, eventually having to ask our neighbour to move his tent a couple of feet. The sweat pissed off us collectively as we set camp and took hours to cool down but come 12 me, Alan and Emily went in search of our Yurt Loving bastard friends Pat and Paula. Fresh as daisies they emerged from the shimmering heat to enjoy our first pint of the day.
Thursday
Was mostly exploratory but we enjoyed The Beatles Dub Club in Shangri La and a first ever (excellent) comedy gig by Jonathan Pie in the Astrolobe. Showhawk Duo on the Bandstand were a disappointment, way too crowded and actually not that good anyway as they played Ibiza hits on acoustic guitar.
Friday
Was the first music day proper and I saw:
Star Feminine Band from Benin. Beautiful chill opener but not life changing
Yaya Bey from USA. Kinda mix of Jazz, R&B and soul/reggae. I liked her a lot. And of course both gigs benefited from being own West Holts (I attended more than quarter of my gigs on this sublime stage. Park has a lot too).
Billy Nomates on the Park came in for terrible trolling for using backing tapes burt that’s her thing. Brilliant. First highlight of the week.
Then back to West Holts for Gabriels. Now we are talking star material here. This band, or at least the singer will be massive (He later came on with Elton on the Sunday closer such is his promise).
Foo Fighters on Pyramid were tolerable but then we headed uphill again to The Park for the best ever Sparks Gig (I’ve been at – my third) with a show stopping cameo by Cate Blanchette in her stunning yellow suit.
We opted to miss Arctic Monkeys and were rewarded with a stunning set by Fever Ray that was thrillingly atmospheric. Only the Park Stage can deliver this.
Saturday
The heat was appalling!
Say She She opened on West Holts lovely Discodelic Soul from a top trio.
Then we had to run for cover but struck lucky with an hour and a half of Dub Reggae with the Channel One Soundsystem on The Glade Stage, in the shade by the water dispenser. Bliss.
Back out into the heat for Sudan Archives whose early sound problems stymied her gig and was ultimately one of the week’s disappointments.
Badly Drawn Boy in the Acoustic Tent was fine but it was too mukluk so I repaired to the shade and a hot can of Punk IPA. Gruesome. He was decent though.
I wish I could have seen the full Maggie Rogers set on The Other Stage. She’s a roots star in the making with the looks to guarantee cover pics on Rolling Stone.
I missed it because I was about to fulfil a 20 year ambition of seeing Tinariwen Live on Park. Boiling hot as it was the Bedouin guitar band rocked it in their unique swanky, jazzy way that only they can do. Sublime and trancelike.
I stayed on Park for Leftfield and was blown away by their sonic attack with deep bass growling right through the ground. Wonderful.
After that, again on park, The Pretenders blew us away. My God can Chrissie Hyde sing and guest appearances from Johnny Marr, Dave Grohl and even Macca came on for a bow. Outstanding rock and roll.
Then to close we saw the first three songs of a pathetic Lana Del Ray set on Other before bailing to see an equally grim Steve Hillage Band in the Glade.
Sunday
Opened with the glorious N’famade Koutyate on Avalon. One of my picks of the week he did not disappoint with a charming set featured around his two Balaphones (one major, one minor).
Then we set off for The Pyramid and the glorious The Chicks set.
Next another hike up the hill rewarded by a beautiful hippy trippy (and very funny chat) from Weyes Blood. A highlight. Before back doewn again to Pyramid for an awful set (ruined by the wind even further) by Blondie. I wish I’d seen her in her prime but twice in her 70’s was once too much.
We popped back to West Holts for a cool set by Barrington Levy followed by a trip back in timne with Candie Staton that Emily and I danced wildly too before ending our festival at Elton John in a huge crown but rewarded wit by a set full of pure bangers with his pipes in good shape. It was all it promised to be, and more.
Monday
The drive home was gruesome. The M6 closed TWICE and a 14 hour journey. Thank God I split the trip with Emily.
I watched this documentary at the Omni Centre in Edinburgh 50 years to the day that David Bowie retired Ziggy at The Hammersmith Odeon at the last gig of his Aladdin Sane tour.
It’s a profoundly moving experience in the cinema because this is maybe the greatest ever pop star at the very top of his game, on show with one of the greatest ever guitarists, Mick Ronson , on fire with his orgasm face in full flow throughout.
Not only is it a great gig (filmed almost in full) but it’s also a great documentary because we get behind the scenes footage, mostly with Suzanne Fussey, Ronson’s wife , applying Bowies make up and adjusting his weirdly unwonderful costumes. And a very very brief cameo from Ringo Star.
The crowd footage is particularly naïve, (in a good and endlessly interesting way). Shot in the natural light of the auditorium it veers from entirely revealing to shadowy mystery and this only adds to the overall mystique.
Of course the gig is FULL of bangers from Hunky Dory, Ziggy (naturally) Aladdin Sane and The Man Who Ruled The World, plus a bit of Space Oddity (notably Space Oddity itself).
There’s a wee spot of Lindsay Kemp madness as Bowie mimes his way out of a box. Like a prick. But that doesn’t distract too much.
The man himself is at his peak. He’s simply beautiful and there are no signs of the substance abuse that he indulged in heavily at the time. Instead we get a vocal performance of outrageous perfection and that’s what makes this a religious experience.
Try to see it in the cinema or at the very least at 100% volume on your TV when it comes to Netflix.
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