see me, feel me
04.10.05 @ 3:20 a.m.
You know what one of the beautiful things about the film version of Tommy is? It doesn't really clear things up that well. The album is magnificently open to interpretation. The movie is a whole different animal, with it's own, new ambiguities. I prefer the album (for one thing, actors are often terrible singers; see: Oliver Reed, Ann Margaret, Jack Nicholson) of course, but the movie is still great to watch.
It's my favorite bad movie. But that's not quite right. It isn't exactly a bad movie, it's just really strange. What the hell do you expect from Ken Russell, though? If it had been done in the style of Quadrophenia, you would have had something completely different. Just imagine that. I think maybe that would have been impossible. Quadrophenia is... rain and olive green and grey, if we go with a little synesthesia, both in album and movie forms. Tommy probably belongs in bright colors and heavy-handed symbolism.
But really, the thing that gets me the most is wondering how in the hell Roger Daltrey got through this movie with no apparent scars and a wicked case of tentanus. When Tommy makes his way through the junkyard, knocking over the appliances and climbing over cars, I wince. The wholesale destruction of "We're Not Gonna Take It" makes me wonder how many extras got cut on broken glass (and how much it cost them to destroy so many pinball machines, though I suppose it would be cheap enough to get non-functioning ones to smash up).
'Tis a movie I would like to make more people see, because I certainly enjoy the hell out of it both for it being the Who and for it being just a magnificently strange movie, but the fact is that I feel alternately guilty and distressingly obsessive for even thinking of saying "You have to watch this movie, you just have to." Martha is pretty tolerant. I think I had her watch "Baba O'Riley" in The Kids Are Alright and my tape of the 1989 concert with Billy Idol et al. (Part of this guilt probably comes from my dad watching TKAA with me and him giving up around "Magic Bus." Jerk. But I guess TKAA can feel long, since it's composed of many, many, many short segments and doesn't have, you know, a plot. It's not chronological. But it's good, good, good.
So good, good, good that I'm going to watch "Baba O'Riley" before I go to bed. (Yeah, it's late, but I slept all day, not feeling so great. I'm just about ready to sleep again, but I can put it off long enough for concert footage, even though I know it will energize me a little. Er, a lot, actually. When I love something, I love it hard.)
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
