Almost Famous : An Eternal Love Affair
“Experience It. Enjoy It. Just Don’t Fall For It.”
Almost Famous is an almost definitive film on the Rock and Roll generation.
It is fulfilling in its imperfections, and scuttles along the time period which would lay the ground rules for the future generation reeling in a lack of anything to stick to.
The premise is San Diego, 1969. A growing up little tale of a routine troubled family. A young boy, William(Patrick Fugit) stranded between his idealistic mother and rock infested elder sister, Anita(Zooey Deschanel). The mother(a brilliant Frances McDormand) is amusing in her insecurities while she mouths philosophical inanities and further loses the trust of her children.
Rock and roll presents an adhesive to this broken and simplistically complex world, or rather one which every family living alongside the beach in those sun-kissed late sixties would have wanted to be remembered as. It is logically simple to absorb. The family is conflicted, so the girl will flee. The boy will live under the influence of her memories, also considering the mother’s constantly unasked for tutelage.
Music, yet again, becomes a character and establishes the coming of age phase of William. Predictably, he becomes our keyhole into the ever-so-wondrous years of rock and roll. In comes Lester Bangs(Philip Seymour Hoffman in anotherstealing-the-thunder turn), a memorable sketch of everything the period reminds of – promiscuity, disloyalty, bitching around, sermonizing hollow principles, gulping a beer and proving it all wrong with acute modesty.
The film, I would say is Crowe’s biggest achievement, god save the celebrated Maguire. I couldn’t care less about it. Almost Famous will be a photo album of memories for me.
It is profoundly unassuming in its narrative, memorable characters in place. They are things you would have heard of before. There are things you would not have, e.g. The Doors are drunken buffoons et al. And there are those sweet little nothings that you would probably miss in the first watch. William in his umpteen stolen glances, his shy and unrehearsed grin. And Penny Lane(Kate Hudson) is the other-worldly perspective of William. She is everything his sister would be now, serving as a stewardess somewhere in some corner of the world listening to rock and roll. She is flawed yet lovable. Much like Russell(Billy Crudup). The scene where he tells William to make them look cool in his write-up couldn’t bring the story any closer to reality.
And the proverbial sex and drugs are well in place to compliment their third cousin.
But that is not what makes this film a classic. It could probably not be defined. Or rather I would never be able to do it. Even after infinite watches, I cannot react to all that I like, or rather the subliminal experience of watching the very things that I am looking for overrule their being registered. Probably it will always like that. And I love it.
It’s a feeling like the after-the-storm-has-settled morning highway bus ride in the film, the famous ‘Blue jean baby’ sequence(from Elton John’s Tiny Dancer)
Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she’s in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand
Crowe does brilliant and epitomic sequences and characters no doubt, but he does something extra here(may be because its semi-autobiographical) that takes it beyond the tangible or measurable parameters or yardstick that separates a good film from a bad film or rather a special film from good film. I would place the film a notch above Forrest Gump in capturing a time period so mystically and accurately, for personal reasons I guess.
Almost Famous gives me a sense of identification and warmth which hardly any other film rarely could. I am not saying that this is it, but like they say, “It’s the buzz”.
Rock iconoclasm is another aspect the film includes fantastically along with creating postcard visuals. The bands, their little inside stories, the promiscuity, their insecurities bursting up in music, sex and addictions, the whole cool factor around their existence, and more.
There could possibly be no end to how much I could derive from the film. I could get drunk on films and alcohol any rainy night and write myself to death. But somehow I could never express the true emotions. It’s too ‘incendiary’!
Tags: Medium
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Love this movie ! “It is fulfilling in its imperfections..” very true !
the song is actually “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John and the lyrics are “Blue jean baby”. But yes, it’s one amazing movie that did a great job of conveying the spirit of Rock & Roll! School of Rock is another great movie about Rock and Roll!
If you do watch this movie, I reccomend you watch the Bootleg cut, where there is an extended sequence where Penny Lane just dances around all by herself in an empty hall, while cat steven’s “wind of my soul” plays in the background. Very beautiful.
Thanks Hemanth.
Spock, Thanks for pointing it out. I have made the changes. I love School of Rock too. It also deserves a long post.
Devayon, I have the original DVD with the Bootleg cut.
Rock is about …. sticking it to the MAN … !! (heeeelll yeaaahhhh)
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Billy Crudup simply blew my mind as Russell Hammond.One of the most charismatic characters i’ve ever seen on screen.The 1st time you see him perform on stage,You’ll seriously wanna worship him.Fever Dog rules!!Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs is equally cool.Love his rant against the changing nature of rock.Frances McDormand is simply endearing as William’s neurotic mother.
i love this movie cus it shows a time i so dearly wish i was part of. its an incredible movie and i think that it is perfect.
Food lord , if you actually steered away from trying to sound all smart and had actually kept it closer to reality with simple yet meaningful sentences , this article would actually have made a great read …
I don’t even think you captured the essence of the movie, reviews are never written like this … anywhere … pretentious, I cant find a word any subtler !
Quote:
1. “proverbial sex and drugs”
- What is that ? When did it fall under proverbial ? Needle in the haystack – now thats proverbial ! Oh you mean Sex Drugs and Rock n Roll … Hmmm … (Rolls eyes)
2. “Even after infinite watches”
ahhhh …. aaahhhh …. aaaaaaahhhh …. Ok, I still don’t get it !
3. “Crowe does brilliant and ‘epitomic’ sequences”
Wooohhh that sounds big … only if it meant something .. Tsk tsk
4. “Almost Famous gives me a sense of identification and warmth”
Ehhh a sense of what ?
5. “It’s too ‘incendiary’!”
The last one got me cracking … The entire last paragraph actually , what is it ? Dramatic writing ? WTH ? Lol … hehehehe …
Keep it simple bro … simple but yet from what you truly felt … or was your ass on “fire” for real when you actually watched it ? Then say that … My ass was up in flames when I was watching this flick … not my ass was so incendiary …
Do you get what I mean ? Sorry for the dramatic flair in the statement of a rather simple point , guess it runs in the post !
If its just bad english , its understandable , but this … this ain’t that !
dude, come again some other day and I would react to you. not almost famous and definitely not a satday morning :-)