The Future is Unwritten

Last night I saw Julien Temple’s Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. As expected, it is an extraordinary documentary. Taking on from The Filth and the Fury (2000), the film is amazing in terms of editing, original source material, mixing of new and vintage animation, the avoidance to surrender to a “logical” historical-chronological sequence and to identify interviewees, and overall in its compelling way to present the life and work of one of the most important figures of contemporary pop culture. Temple sets his interviews in campfires in London, New York and other places, as a post-mortem homage to Strummer, who was very fond of these celebrations at the end of his life (it is very interesting to see the narrative come full circle, not only in formal cinematographic terms but in terms of the story narrated: the hippie “Woody” becoming “Joe Strummer” and adopting punk and rejecting hippies only to find out in the end that punks and hippies share much more than it is normally thought). The voice of Strummer comes back from the grave to tell his own story, and fans, friends, collaborators and band members tell their story surrounded by fire and night. You will spot Don Letts, John Lydon, Courtney Love, Flea, Martin Scorsese, Steve Buscemi, John Cusack, Damien Hirst, Jim Jarmusch, Bono and even Johnny Depp remembering the main man of the Clash and the Mescaleros. The film transmits an uncontrollable life energy, a powerful ethical and creative imagination trapped in the crossroads of “real life” and the complications/temptations of commercial success. The film is a life lesson in itself: it reminds us how anaesthesized we are and how the only way to resist absolute alienation is through art and a commitment to it. Strummer as presented by Temple is almost a too-literal translation of Jack Kerouac’s famous dictum: “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time”. Profoundly moving and inspiring, (the sequence in the campfire by the Hudson when Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones is rendered in an acoustic, round-the-fire version brought a tear to my eye) Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten is an essential documentary in order to understand not only the importance of The Clash or the history of punk music and culture, but the history of contemporary Britain itself. By juxtaposing vintage sequences from 1984 and Animal Farm, Temple achieves a sharp and mordant critique of the state of affairs in this country since the 1960’s through the portrait of a great creative force. Whether you are a Joe Strummer fan or not, it is an ethical imperative to watch it.

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And the new issue of Galatea Resurrects is gone live! My review of Mortal, by Ivy Alvarez, is here.

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Battling the evil robots of an incipient cold. ¡No pasarán!

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UPDATE: There is an interesting piece by Michael Wood on Spider-man 3 at The London Review of Books. While it is almost obvious that Wood is not a superhero comic book reader, he seems to “get the point” of the first two films, but, though I agree with him in general about the third one, he seems to spend too much time telling us about the plot and fails to fully criticize/analyze the really weak points of the film. I saw it almost two weeks ago and it didn’t move me to even write a word about it. The following will sound incredibly snobbish and geeky, but I still find a bit annoying that someone can write a review of a movie like Spider-man without having had the first-hand experience of having grown up reading the comics. (Can you imagine anyone getting away with publishing a review of a Shakespeare adaptation without even mentioning Shakespeare’s name or the adapted play? Can you?) That’s the only way one could approach the appearance of the Sandman and Venom in the same narrative, or the apparently non-consequential appearance of “a handy scientist” (Wood dixit) who happens to be no other but Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard. I suppose that, as it is commonsensical these days, “there is no single correct way to read a text”, but I still believe that in order to properly judge a film based in non-cinematographic source material (the hypotext if you fancy) one needs to have approached the latter first. The mainstream’s reluctance to accept that comics are important on their own and not just as mere kitsch bubblegum pop culture referents unnerves me. Anyway, as someone who grew up both reading Spider-man and watching Sam Raimi movies, I thought that the last installment was indeed a major, catastrophic disappointment. The Hobgoblin’s spectral re-appearance saying “Remember me” must be one of the cheapest, crappiest Shakespearian references ever. As Wood points out, the lyrical witticism of the first two films is completely lost in the third one; the character reduced/ironically-caricaturized/dumbed down to its lowest common denominator. Ironically as well, Stan Lee’s cameo (”I believe a man can make a difference”) is completely subverted by the film itself, proving that men (Raimi; Lee, his team of writers) can also choose not to make a difference, except for the ‘positive’ one in their bank accounts, of course. Wood points out that Spider-man 2, probably the most interesting of the franchise, was the one that had the least commercial success, while the third one, the most pathetic/mediocre/stupid of them all, is breaking all box office records. That’s contemporary culture and its discontents for you. The other significant cameo appearance in the film, that of Bruce Campbell (who is also in the second one) is just the right proof that nothing is sacred anymore. In the UK the movie was labeled with a 12 certificate, but I think its ideal audience is that of 8-year-olds. It even made me wish it had been directed, of all people, by Todd McFarlane. Sad.