Sympathy for the Devil
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.41 You Save: $5.53 (28%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.71 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Sympathy for the Devil
Movie Review: I found this film fascinating, despite its reputation....
Summary: 4 Stars
This film has been unfairly maligned by many (Rolling Stones fans, Godard fans), but it's actually pretty good and absolutely fascinating at times. Godard's politics get in the way of his cinematic mastery at times, but overall I found this as good and as compulsively watchable as his classic films. One of the greatest things about this film (as others have noted here) is showing The Rolling Stones in their rawest state. This isn't a slick, MTV, reality style TV programme with lame interviews and an obsession with showing only the "fun times" while working. Godard shows (with his camera circling the studio in brilliantly filmed long takes) how absolutely TEDIOUS it is to make a record/CD/music. We see Jagger, Richards, Wyman, Watts (and studio musicians) obsess over the most minute details on how the song Sympathy for the Devil is going to sound. It's not like "hey, let's do the song", and one take later, they're done. There aren't any groupies, flashing lights, nothing. It's just The Stones making their music, and it shows the dedication that great musicians like The Rolling Stones put into their craft. It's also especially sad to see Brian Jones, who was pretty much "gone" at the time of this film. The Stones put him off in a corner (he looks like he's sitting in his own little box), and you can hear him strumming inaudibly. There's a microphone in front of him, but it obviously isn't on, and Jones doesn't seem to know. Jagger, Wyman, Richards, and Watts pretty much ignore him, and soldier on without him. Jones's drug use and alienation were at its zenith here, and he died shortly after these sessions. These sequences might be the most realistic depiction of rock musicians recording an album ever.
Godard intercuts a lot of political material in the film (this film was made during his generally abysmal "Maoist" period), but his framing (especially scenes shot at a junkyard) is classic Godard. Even though these scenes in the junkyard are with the Black Panthers and their rhetoric/dialogue are completely dated, dogmatic, and overly political, the scenes are still well shot and crafted. I never found the film boring, unlike some of Godard's other Maoist films like La Chinoise, which was REALLY boring. So if you're a Godard fan, or a Stones fan, you should see this film. It's really quite good, despite some of its politics.
Movie Review: the stones as workers?
Summary: 4 Stars
The coverage of the Rolling Stones in this movie is intentionally de-romanticized. We only see the Stones in the awkward process of making a song; we never hear the song finished, or even grooving--and we know that it did groove. Be warned: it's not pretty, nor do the Stones even seem especially cool. If you know what a rehearsing rock band usually looks/sounds like, you'll probably admit: my god, the Rolling Stones look like a band of young men putzing about and putting a song together--even as they made "Sympathy for the Devil." While the film isn't conventionally "exciting," it has some remarkable visual poetry in it. The dated rhetoric in the explicitly political bits seems not to be the point, but the film's "point" may lie beyond that rhetoric, as the "complete" version of the Stones song exists only beyond these rehearsals, after it gets its groove, after it hits radio, meets a mass audience, and takes on a pop-mythic life of its own. The Stones, though a big part of the film, seem finally to be a small element in a utopian meditation. The movie is finally hard to paraphrase or verbalize, and I think that is to its credit: shouldn't some films resist recondensation into words?Movie Review: Caveat Emptor
Summary: 3 Stars
I must have had this movie in my hands a few dozen times before I finally picked it up in a hasty moment recently. The reviews herein hit the nail pretty squarely and if you are wondering about it, please take note: THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE STONES.
I know nothing of Jean-Luc Godard's work and have no desire to if this is indicative of his style. That's not a knock on him at all, just a definition of my own taste. That said, the Stones footage is priceless, especially is you are intrigued by what some might consider the mundane nature of composing a song. Keith has often confessed that the best songwriting of the band comes from what he calls a "marination" process and that is an apt description of how Sympathy for the Devil is created in the footage from the studio we are treated to. The film captures this fascinating process as the song progresses and transforms. Highlights along the way are Keith's seemingly off-the-cuff riffing that mirror the final stinging solo of the recording, the keyboard morphing from organ to the more classic piano, and the percussion component ending with the now classic work from Rocky Dijon. It was like being a fly on the wall and proved mesmerizing to me.
However, if you are inpatient with the interwoven parts of the film that the back cover calls "political cartoons" and find it too tedious to sift through, I would strongly advise renting before owning. Interestingly enough, I found Gimme Shelter far more frustrating because much of the Stones footage in that movie was focused on Jagger exclusively. In this movie, we are treated to a broad canvas and get to see everyone, including Brian Jones, contributing. Many slag off his part in the process, but I think he was doing his best and was not nearly as "out of it" as many reviewers have stated.
Five stars for the Stones, minus two for the rest, that's the final rating of three.
Movie Review: Marx 'n' Roll
Summary: 3 Stars
A rarely screened late 60's curio, "Sympathy For The Devil" looms larger as a legend in the minds of those who have namechecked it over the years than as a bonifide "classic". While it's great to have it available on DVD, 35 years passing have not been kind to the film's scattershot approach. Director Jean-Luc Goddard is not exactly famous for linear narrative, so it's not like I was expecting "ABBA: The Movie", but I found this film rough going all the same. The premise: Goddard was given permission to film the Stones working in the studio on thier classic "Sympathy For The Devil". He took this footage and intercut it with Black Panthers spouting political rhetoric and conducting "guerilla theater" vignettes about the "Revolution". While I think we "get" the analogy between the seeds of creativity (the Stones methodically building the song in the studio) and the seeds of Revolution (being sown in the streets), the repetitive nature of the dated rhetoric wears out its welcome quickly. This does leave one pondering as to whom, exactly, the film is for. Music fans will probably find the interruptions annoying; history buffs studying 60's politics will likely find the Stones superfluous. Personally, I found the beautifully shot Stones footage enough to warrant hanging on to my copy. If you're looking for a classic 60's MUSIC film with the Stones, check out "Gimme Shelter" instead. If you're looking for a time capsule of 60's POLITICS, try "Medium Cool" or "Putney Swope". Unfortunately, while "Sympathy" contains a good amount of both,it never successfully connects with either music OR politics.Movie Review: "Well, let's just go roll some bandages for the revolution!"
Summary: 3 Stars
Were we, the members of the "Woodstock Generation" really that STUPID, taking this "revolution" stuff literally? OK, were it not for the fact that Jean-Luc Goddard, the director of this thing, seemed hell-bent on inflicting footage of...I guess..."the upcoming revolution" or something, this would be fantastic. It's interesting to watch the Stones take their own sweet time, create the song. Initially, there's Mick, Keef, Brian (!), & Charlie doing a "well, we CERTAINLY don't have THIS together" version, with sideburned Nicky Hopkins trying to lay an organ part on what he hears. And, again, try to tune out the "revolutionary" segments, because the movie just keeps getting more and more interesting. There's Keef, swapping off with Bill, laying down a bass pattern; Brain finally getting so out of it that someone has to light his cigarette for him; both Keef and Mick are QUITE..."primed," you can almost smell the exotic tobacco in the studio. I have been told there there is a version of this movie available somewhere with the completed song, I haven't seen it. But I do enjoy watching Mick doing his "electric rooster" routine while laying down the vocal track, and right behind the sound-baffle, Keef and Anita (VERY much together), and a host of others are doing the OOH-OOH background vocals. Try to do the impossible and tune out the liberal gibberish. You'll be rewarded seeing the Stones create one of their very greatest songs. And let me know if you can get hold of the copy with the completed song.