The Velvet Underground: Todd Haynes Doc Captures the NYC Cult Stars in Full Splendour
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B+
Having marshalled the fabulously weird, Barbie-centric Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, the highly dramatized Bob Dylan tale I’m Not There, and Velvet Goldmine, the glam-rock drama patterned after David Bowie and Marc Bolan, Todd Haynes is uniquely well-suited as writer/director of this film about one of New York City’s most famous and enduring musical exports.
Those credentials give Haynes tremendous frame of reference, but The Velvet Underground is no exercise in fantasy. It’s a straight-up, feature-length documentary, clearly demonstrating that truth is stranger than fiction, and using the typical tools of the genre — archival footage, interviews with surviving band members, contemporaries, friends, family members, and professional cohorts — to chronicle the band while placing them in the larger framework of the era, notably their relationship to Andy Warhol and the infamous Factory art, film, and music scene of his creation.
The Velvet Underground benefits from huge amounts of archival footage courtesy of Factory, which filmed everything always, yet the film is also defined by what’s missing: the ruminations of the late Lou Reed who pretty much everyone interviewed identified as the creative engine and soul of the band, all props to John Cale (who does comment, as does Mo Tucker) notwithstanding.
Though Reed beams in from the past, the passage of time would have offered critical perspective, surely a source of frustration to the filmmakers and a chasm not filled by Reed’s long-time (albeit post-Velvets) partner Laurie Anderson, who does not participate. But still. There’s heaps to enjoy here.
Haynes’ frequent and dramatic use of split-screens is visually arresting, and he does an excellent job of establishing context, juxtaposing the strait-laced hangover of the 1950s against the rebellious incoming spirit of the 60s, while emphasizing Reed’s view that lyrics are on par with literature as crucial chronicles of a moment in time, plus his refusal to bow to the prevailing musical tides.
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The film successfully lays the groundwork for how the Velvet Underground became the Velvet Underground; how a surly square peg like Reed and a brilliant iconoclast like Cale at once reflected and refracted the bizarre energy of grimy 1965 to 1970 New York, wrangling its weirdness into something consumable that anyone hip enough to know about the band could digest and call their own.
Singer’s Nico’s role is also well-placed. She emerges as the template for the so-called hot chick singer who made the angular aspects of the Velvet’s music seem more accessible. Well, accessible-ish. Ironically, her worldliness also serves as a reminder that, the Welsh-born Cale excepted, the rest of the Velvets were rather uncosmopolitan and cloistered despite their too-cool-for-school attitude.
There are no particular reveals here; this story has been much chronicled, but it has never been told better or more coherently. It may not be quite as thrilling as Edgar Wright’s brilliant The Sparks Brothers, which had the benefit of two still-living, sharp-as-tacks protagonists to interview, but it’s a must-see for fans and a highly interesting two hours for music junkies.
The Velvet Underground. Written and directed by Todd Haynes. With John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Danny Fields, Merrill Reed-Weiner, and Jackson Browne. Available on AppleTV+ October 15.