Savage Messiah (1972; Ken Russell) is probably infamous
director Ken Russell’s most personal film, one into which he invested roughly
$1m of his own money out of passion for the project as well as to maintain maximum
creative control, using the biopic—despite (or enhanced by)
“necessary exaggeration of the facts”—as the delivery
system for his artistic manifesto.
Russell has created an intense and vibrant, but
sometimes necessarily off-putting film, exploring volcanic creative talent,
warts and all.
Wisely following LERNER INTERNATIONAL’s Rule of
Biopics: Only the most important five to ten years of that person’s life should
be presented in the film,
Savage Messiah covers the last years of
sculptor Henri Gaudier, one of Ken Russell’s heroes: As a young man, KR had
discovered H.S. Ede’s biography of Gaudier, and been deeply moved. (Ede’s
biography was also the inspiration for screenwriter Christopher Logue’s
literate and dense script.)
The film follows the artist as he carves his greatest
triumphs and develops his philosophies—
while having a very verbose and intellectually invigorating
platonic relationship with Polish poet/philosopher Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy
Tutin, all sparkles and prickles), the both of them living in grinding, abject
poverty. (She’s such an influence on him, he calls her his sister, and even
adopts her name, becoming Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.)
Gaudier-Brzeska was part of that wild pre-Great War
zeitgeist that laid the seeds which would blossom into Dada, Surrealism and all
that groovy Modernist “Art Kunst” that the Nazis hated. Stick around to the end
of the film, when director Russell lovingly puts Henri’s sculptures on display,
using movement and music to great effect.
Like his best works, Savage Messiah is a dense flick, with great use of sound—in the
cities, the noise is oppressive, and constructed to be maddening.
Visually, Russell is that most kinetic of filmmakers,
and his kind won’t be seen again anytime soon.
While his actors motor-mouth volumes of dialog, the
director never lets things get dull by using lots of edits, as well as a
mobile, roving camera. These are contrasted with KR’s elegant compositions
which jolt viewers via shocks of recognition and beauty: as much as Russell may
pull back the curtain to reveal the ugly, unvarnished truth, he will also focus
and linger on unutterably beautiful objects, whether created by man or nature.
Unlike most biopics that falsely assume the audience’s
love of the biographical subject equals that of the film’s producer(s), Savage Messiah is really about (and
celebrates) the process rather than the end result.
The fact that you’ve never heard of Henri G. (and that
he’s still not that famous) is in
this film’s favor: Savage Messiah
reinforces the need for artistic principles—we (the viewers) can never be
tricked into saying, “Oh, So-and-so is right because he’s famous and successful;” if anything, Henri is right
because he lives his life 110% as an
artist.
The film is very intelligent and very literate, but
certainly not high-brow, despite being about a semi-obscure sculptor: This
flick has the smarts of an autodidact, and makes its pronouncements in a plain
language that can be understood by all.
This is not a flick for everyone, however, especially
those whose bourgeois sensibilities are easily offended—not that there’s any
particularly gratuitous about the film (young Helen Mirren’s delicious nudity
notwithstanding; see below), but it’s rude in the sense that it is not polite,
not staid, not hidebound. It wants to shake you up!
Savage Messiah celebrates Art (and the
Artist) that does not sit placidly in the corner. This movie isn’t for people
who buy a painting because it matches the wallpaper. As Henri says (shouts,
actually—the boy can get on the nerves sometimes) throughout the film, “Art is
alive!”
In a letter to Sophie, Gaudier-Brzeska once wrote,
“In Art one must exaggerate: as the sculptor deepens a
depression, or accentuates a relief, so the writer accentuates a vice,
diminishes some quality according to his needs; and it is only here that the
imagination comes into play. Grandiosity, sublimity and luxury… go with that
necessary exaggeration of the facts which helps secure greater truth.”
(Letter quoted from Ken Russell: Monarch Film Studies (1976), edited by Thomas R. Atkins.)
And that is Ken Russell in a nutshell: he makes
“necessary exaggeration of the facts” to get to that “greater truth.”
It amazes me that critics complained about KR’s
playing fast and loose with facts, when no biopic ever seems to “stick to the
facts.” If anything, it’s KR’s earthiness that bugs the snobs, the fact that KR
is not whitewashing the subject’s life, but celebrating the blood, sweat and
toil that it takes to create.
I’m a big fan of the flicks KR made in the early-1970s
when he was allowed to “go crazy,” especially The Devils and The Music Lovers
(which drove Tchaikovsky purists crazy with it
homosexual-married-to-a-nymphomaniac storyline, but is an excellent film about
a man whose “forbidden”—and unrelieved—sexual urges help drive his artistic
urges), as well as Russell’s very weird Mahler.
(I need to see Lizstomania again to
have a proper opinion; originally screened a long time ago via a poor quality pan-&-scan
VHS dub of a dub of a dub, I didn’t like it at the time.)
Yes, you could say KR was trying to be the “Savage
Messiah of Cinema;” he certainly was ambitious—as well as ahead of his time,
and critics and audiences—programmed like Pavlov’s dogs to only to respond to
“art” when it’s dead and on a pedestal—couldn’t deal with it.
Savage Messiah is especially vital these
days when “Art” has been completely commoditized, with a secret cabal of
dealers, gallerists and buyers determining pricing and “value,” ignoring everything
to do with genuine creativity or originality to maintain their “investments’”
value.
Too bad no one has ever made flicks based on the lives
of Bosch or Breughel…What nightmare visions could we have then—especially had
Russell been behind the camera. Sigh…
Wild Man Ken will be sorely missed…
Unavailable in any home viewing format that I know
about, I managed to catch Ken Russell’s excellent Savage Messiah HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment