A movie about The Velvet Underground has been released

Director Todd Haynes has made a film about the legendary band The Velvet Underground.

While following the documentary truth, the film also conveys a touch of the magic and radicalism of The Velvet Underground

“The Velvet Underground” is the first documentary by the renowned Todd Haynes (“Far From Heaven,” “Carol,” “Dark Waters”), but is seen as a continuation of the quest begun in his two feature films about musicians, “The Velvet Goldmine” (1998) and “I’m Not There” (2007). “Velvet Goldmine” was about the glam-rock era, with only strokes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop in the central characters. “I’m Not There” was technically a biopic of Bob Dylan, but the latter was played by six actors, including Cate Blanchett and a young dark-skinned Marcus Carl Franklin, and instead of a solid plot there were six stories, both real and taken from songs. “I’m Not There” is remembered as an example of a “good biopic” every time something needs to be contrasted with “Doors” or “Bohemian Rhapsody.” A true biopic is impossible, but stories about artists of the past must be told, or they will be forgotten (and back catalogs will stop selling).

In the new film The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes is very careful to follow the historical truth, telling the story of the two founding members of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and John Cale.

The first was a staunch rock ‘n’ roller who, as a young man, was forced by his parents to undergo electroshock therapy to rid him of his bisexual tendencies. Before he became one of rock’s biggest innovators, he still managed to sing in the sweet doo-wop band The Jades and work on songs for the pop label Pickwick Records. In other words, before collapsing into the abyss of Andy Warhol’s Factory experiments, Lou Reed mastered the basics of the pop craft and understood what the public loves and what you need to build off of when making new music.

Welsh violist John Cale, by contrast, was an absolute elitist. Having gained an understanding of classical music at the University of London and of contemporary music at La Monte Young’s Dream Syndicate, he regarded music-making exclusively as high art. He might have been interested in the Chinese idea of “music that has sounded for centuries” or in some performance with an axe smashing a piano, but not in frivolous rock ‘n’ roll.

Andy Warhol was not only the producer of the new band, he was actually the first to realize that the packaging in pop music meant as much as the songs themselves.

Hence the endless photo sessions at the Factory, hence the legendary banana on the cover of The Velvet Underground’s debut album, hence even the invitation of the German actress Christa Peffgen, who had become famous for her appearance in Federico Fellini’s Sweet Life and sang on stage under the pseudonym Niko. Warhol was fascinated by her and understood that such a “white iceberg” would look great on stage against the backdrop of black-skinned rockers. But Nico herself felt she was underappreciated as a singer, and this is one of the conflicting points in the band’s history.

Todd Haynes recounts well-known events using a poly-screen that primarily evokes the 1970 film Woodstock. For example, in one part of the screen, shots of the New York streets of the 1960s are running, while from the other, one of the band’s musicians looks at the viewer, almost unblinking. These Warhol video portraits are looped by Todd Haynes in “giffy” mode, and the very nervous rhythm of what’s happening on the screen makes a special connection to the songs of The Velvet Underground. The band’s classic compositions are often built on repetitive elements and a monotonous rhythm, creating a hypnotic sense of stupor and danger.

When the narrative focuses on the hero in one part of the screen or on another “factory” heppening, the character of the next chapter already appears in the other.

Such a presentation is not always comfortable for the viewer, but the metaphor is transparent: Nico, The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol were able to see signs of the future in the present. It’s not for nothing that they’ve been called the harbingers of punk rock, the progenitors of drone and the forerunners of noise.

The most valuable thing in the film is the testimonies of the participants of the events. Many of the interviews are from the archives, but living ex-participants of The Velvet Underground John Cale and Maureen Tucker were interviewed especially for the film. Also in the frame is a huge number of their associates, including the still-living La Monte Young and the charming, despite their age, Mary Ravens. Long-gone storytellers interrupt the living, and this conversational polyphony rhymes with the noise of the New York streets.

Todd Haynes simultaneously narrates the birth of a new musical language and himself searches for a new language for documentaries and for stories about celebrities.