A Musical Tryst with "Velvet Goldmine"

“Velvet Goldmine” picks up an issue, considers its facets, and then releases it to float around the atmosphere. The film poses such questions as the tyranny of the past, of cultural expectations, of relationships, and of image, but it does not so much answer as wonder, not so much tackle as expose. The film avoids passing blatant judgement, so that “Velvet Goldmine” is neither psychological burden nor frivolity.

This is fitting of course, as Todd Haynes’ 1998 production, set for rerelease this week, revels in 1970s British glam rock, a movement that added a serious edge to the hippie 60s without loosing the sex, drugs, or rock and roll. After the opening credits uncoil with a pack of neon-clad teens scampering down London streets, the movie is a series of reminiscing individuals who surrounded Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ megastar Bryan Slade: his ex-wife, ex-manager, ex-partner, ex-fan. It thus feeds off the contrast between the illustrious past and dingy present, between existing inside the glitter and outside the hysteria.

For a film that so revolves around the passage of time, the effect is only of a moment in time. The story in fact stagnates in the middle so that one feels the movement of real time without the movement of the plot. Oscar Wilde’s oft-quoted “Dorian Gray” fits unexpectedly here, tying together the self-awareness of the movie’s theatrical progression with the teenage and bisexual angst and the musicians’ staged personas.

The screenplay is a would-be tribute to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust years, with an extraterrestrial twist and without the Bowie song list. Bowie is absent because he refused the rights to the seven tracks Haynes wanted, claiming this collaboration would be bad competition for his own, now dematerialized “Ziggy 2002 Project.” It’s a shame, since “Velvet Goldmine” yearns to be glam rock but, without the blessing of the main star, only manages to be about glam rock.

Nonetheless, if “Velvet Goldmine” has one thing, it is a head-bobbing, toe-tapping good beat. The tunes ask to be felt and to be repeated, especially the spunky “Baby’s on Fire” written for the film by Roxy Music’s Brain Eno. Paired with wild costumes, from spacesuits to French powdered wigs, the soundtrack’s force is catchy and spot-on.

The influence of a green pin and a spaceship that brings a young Oscar Wilde to earth in the film’s first scene suggests some reality to the artifice of the boys’ image-creating. Somehow, the pin gives its wearer the luck to launch into stardom, passing from Wilde through Ewan McGreggor’s Iggy Pop-like character and finally, to Slade. Ironically, it is this bit of the extraterrestrial that brings the pop icons down to earth. Let the confusion whisk reality and fantasy into peaks, and “Velvet Goldmine’s” momentary tryst through the early 70’s music scene is pleasurably mystical.