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A grenade tossed into the sherry party of English fiction’
- sci-fi messiah J.G. Ballard on William Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’

‘Maybe we should call Dr. Burroughs’
- Performance (1970)

Naked Lunch:———- arch anarchist William Burroughs’ depraved junkie howl from the land of the damned. A miserable soul- senses deranged, displaced, screaming obscenities as he sets a monkey-wrench to the very foundations of modern society. Mocking social reality with the glee of a naked perverse madman. The personal hell of a modern outlaw. Winston Smith with Klashnikov in hand and junk in the blood stream up at arms against an unknown fascism. Big Brother dressed up marquee style, flashing his grin from fifteen feet high canvas informing that you could be so suave, so popular, so hip if only you could buy that one brand of bathroom soap. How about a car? Then a fairness cream atleast? ‘Rub out the word’, said Burroughs. Resist the tyranny of structure that you fallen into. Escape the architecture of conformity where you unfortunate sons have been born. Splinter your conditioned conscience, only then will reality prism into truth. Burroughs furiously lashed out pages of cutting edge prose only to rip them apart and glue them in a mad spin around like an insane jigsaw puzzles with their bulbs chopped off. The quest was poetry. Of Freedom.

‘Performance’ is more ticking time bomb than grenade. Every tick more urgent than the one before, on its way to complete mayhem. Like any bomb squad agent would tell himself as he attempts to dismantle the explosive-on-road-to-hell, one needs to ‘Focus’.

1960s. What Tom Wolfe described as ‘pandemonium with a big grin on’. Something psychedelic had happened. In one part of the world a war raged while yet another discovered themselves- barefoot and groovy. A quest for life was waged against archaic systems of society. There was to be zest in the ‘now’, life was to be marveled at. Young prodigy Donald Cammell and a restless and inspired Marlon Brando, caught in the mad fever of the times, decided to work together in a freewheeling London-in-the-swinging-60s comic caper on the lines of The Beatles’ A Hard Days Night. Rock God and Glamboy Mick Jagger signs in. Like so many of his other projects, Brando’s vision loses steam and he backs out. Cammel collaborates with a cinematographer of some experience who is keen for a directing gig, Nicolas Roeg. By now the 60s has lost some of its swing, the glorious springtime has faded, jaded. The script loses its comic exuberance and is swung through a kaleidoscope of tough guy noir and psychedelic cinema. The outlandish existential sci-fi of Borges and Burroughs and the Beat stream-of-consciousness make a profound influence. Roeg’s cinematographer’s eye has intriguing trips.

“Do you know what Godard said about Roeg?”

“Roeg is cinema”
- Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers’ (2003)

His filmography might include lame skin flicks and lamer lifestyle videos but Nicolas Roeg is a pioneer of landmark cinematic moments. Skipping genres and landscapes with ease and leaving his hallucinatory imprint in all. With the vintage New Wave aura around Roeg he is sometimes credited over Camell with conceiving ‘Performance’ the way it turned out to be. But Camell is no less a visionary. He went on to craft influential horror films like ‘Demon Seed’ and was emulated with reverence by the avant-garde. The debate ‘who and how much’ is endless but the end-product, the vision is singular and powerful.

‘The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness. Am I right? Eh’
- Performance (1970)

The film opens with an image of velocity. A sleek fighter jet rushing with maximum G-force. The camera vibrates with sheer force as it catches the smoke recoiling from the tail.

‘Mick Jagger. And Mick Jagger.’
- Poster of ‘Performance’

With Brando walking off, it was obvious that the Rolling Stones’ frontman was going to be the main ticket pusher for the film. The directors begin with a helicopter shot of a Rolls Royce on the street with strains of a rock song. The notion of the audience is triggered- Old rubber lips may be traveling plush in the backseat. As the Royce strolls on through the country there is tease, a play on conceptions, of material appearance. A window opens but nothing inside can be seen. The music in the background stops abrupt. This is intercut with James Fox’s gangster Chas roughing it up with alpha male kink with a blonde in his bedroom. There is a deliberate protraction in Jagger’s entry but until then there are always strange blinks of what may or may not be him. He makes his entry in all flower power free love sunshine glory made ethereal by the tinkling Arabic tune in the background. A playful romp with his two companions at a completely different orbit from Chas’ opening crude spanking turn. Jagger plays Turner a musician who retired early or like his companion Pherber likes to put it,” He lost his demons.’ Spaced out, eccentric, dressing in bizarre drag, shacked up in a dingy flat with a lost acid gaze, he has reached a plane where his existence has become surreal. Maybe he wants something that could ground him, inspire him to create or maybe he craves for a higher paradise. Jagger plays with a dreamy haze like he were an ancient androgynous god. There is effortlessness in his performance, a delicate one, one that is on the point of sublimation.

“Red Dye”

“Dye. Died”

“Dye”

“Dyed Red”

“Died”

“Red. Red”

The dialogue has the punch-drunk randomness of beat poetry. A new age meta mélange. Hip. And that’s the second half. The earlier half is first rate pulp, taken straight off the streets. Or a two penny paperback.

The first half of the film plays like a visually atypical gangster film. James Fox, an inspired replacement for Brando, chews with cool James Dean menace as gangster Chas, ruffian for a local mob boss who takes pleasure in carrying out threats with startling inventiveness. Pouring acid on the precious Rolls Royce and leaving a message with a shaved, bound and a shit scared driver is the proverbial ‘offer that cannot be refused’. Even as the narrative goes through the motions of a mob flick, there is a sense that nothing is what it seems like one is having dinner with someone who is not all that ‘right-in-the-head’. He may discuss the latest score or talk the stock market but every once in while there is an omen in his gaze of something askew.

The constant drones and disruption in the background score, the manner in which the scenes have been composed and juxtaposed and the promise of Mick Jagger yet to arrive. The vertigo begins to spin out of control as Chas inevitably finds himself on the run from the law and the mob. In a scene cranked with testosterone, Fox stands bloody and bare-chested with only a tie on as he executes his torturers and declares,” I am a bullet” muscles ripping and teeth gashed in fury as he sends the shot home. With all the phallic metaphor that it can summon the movie reaches the crescendo of masculinity. Then on, it is all downhill. Chas until then a street heel with an alley cat sense of survival has been operating with the codes of a system he comprehends. As he drifts outside this system, he is no longer as sharp as he was. The deconstruction of his persona has begun. He dyes his hair red such that he himself struggles to locate his reflection. His confused calls from the phone booth to his mother and associates show him exposed and afraid and even a little naïve. But it is the encounter with Turner and friends that his reality begins to rupture. Chas initially laughs them off as ‘beatniks’ and intends to rent their basement as hideout in the time it takes to forge a passport. Turner too initially resists Chas shacking up in his basement but it’s hard to keep outta sight when one lives in the same house. The dynamics change as Chas tries to negotiate the beatniks’ morality and values with his rigid old school ones. The world is splitting open and not everything is comfortable. The ticking time bomb explodes in light and fury.

Led on by the seductive charms of a rag doll diva named Pherber, who administers him some magic mushroom, Chas is drawn into a strange consciousness where ego and persona cease to exist. He spirals into ideas of strange shapes and colors. Perhaps Turner is the notion of freedom for him while he may be some strange connection for the lost Turner. Mirror reflections and deceptive appearances. Everybody dreams of escape. Some call their escape Persia, some call it America, some don’t know what it is they want.

“In my line of business, it is important to be hip”
- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

‘Performance’ is a movie of unparalleled stylistic audacity at one point even breaking into a full-on Mick Jagger music video. Roeg’s cinematography may start off all strut and pose, calling attention to radical chic but his relentless pursuit of ingenuity using colors like in a madcap art installation and the mirror motif in metaphor overdrive succeeds in boiling up the existential themes of the script. Here, the cinematography is a camouflaging organism that wraps itself around the scenes and lends it vibe and meaning. It goes beyond sensory. The editing is in the manner of a haiku. The first feature film to indulge in avant-garde cut-up, scenes continuing and disparate are spliced together. Disruptive but poetry. Between the eye of the camera and rhythm of the scenes is the soundtrack arranged by a raving Jack Nietzsche employing legends like Randy Newman, Ry Cooder and Jagger for the ultimate trip.

When the movie was screened for the studio officials, one of their wives ended up vomiting her guts out.

I suppose some people are allergic to mushroom

‘If Performance doesn’t upset the audience, then it is nothing’
- Donald Cammell in a Telegram to Warner Brothers studios

(images and information courtesy:- Guardian UK, Wikipedia, Sensesofcinema, Yottamusic, Factropolis, BrooklynRail, adcglobal art by Tadanori Yokoo, Soundtrack Collector, Allposters, Imdb, soundtrack by radioblogclub)