Eins plus eins

Godard made this film during his ultra-loopy "Marxist polemics" period, although before he stopped being so individualistic as to credit himself, rather than a "collective," as the director. It is a rare English-language Godard film, made in the UK. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL alternates documentary scenes of the Rolling Stones developing and rehearsing the title track (a chilling examination of the seductiveness of evil behavior, and one of the Stones's best songs) with what are basically political skits, plus quick bits showing characters spray-painting political slogans on various surfaces, always cutting away before the character finishes the message.

The Stones scenes in themselves make the film worth seeing (for fans of the song, at least). The process of creating and refining an instantly classic song makes for truly fascinating viewing for those interested in making music and seeing how a song evolves. The viewer initially sees Mick Jagger demonstrating the song on acoustic guitar for the other band members. Gradually (in between political interruptions!), the band fleshes out the song's arrangement, adding keyboards, electric guitar, and multiple layers of percussion, developing this work into the rumbling tempest Stones fans know and love. At one point famous Stones hangers-on Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull appear to help with the "whoo-whoo" backing vocals. Near the end, Godard himself materializes to pass out cigarettes to the band members, an oddly post-coital gesture.

The film's other scenes? Amusingly absurd at times, the skits usually involve the characters reading various texts for the viewer. Black militants read from Eldridge Cleaver and the like, while the owner of a porno shop reads from what sounds like Nazi texts, while customers present their selections to him, give a Nazi salute, take their purchase and leave. (The equation of pornography with National Socialism here must have warmed Andrea Dworkin's heart.) The black militant scenes feel rather disturbing, as the viewer sees white women in white gowns led at gunpoint into a junkyard, underscored by Cleaver's thoughts on white women. Later the viewer sees the bloodied corpses of a couple of the women, and the film ends with a dead white woman draped over a crane adorned with red and black flags. Godard seems to be endorsing the vengeful Leftist by-any-means-necessary morality, the kind of thing the Stones's song warns against.

The completed version of "Sympathy of the Devil" plays under the film's ending; allegedly Godard was incensed by the producers' inserting the finished song here. Godard probably wanted the rehearsal scenes to symbolize the development of "the revolution" ("you'll get yours, bourgeoisie!"), and, since "the revolution" hadn't come yet, using the _complete_ song would ruin the parallel. That must also be why the vandals never get to complete their spray-painted slogans. I would be quite interested to see ONE PLUS ONE, Godard's director's cut of this film.

In Bergsonian terms, "Sympathy" or "1+1" seems to represent the cinematographical spirit of Becoming; while deconstructing the perfect rock song (though Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan fans may want to disagree), "Sympathy for the Devil" never actually plays at any time in its totality. Mick and friends conceive of the song while sitting in a semi-circle, and perfect it months later via the same seating arrangement amidst acres of sound equipment. Meanwhile, Godard's full synthesis of his cinema of ideological engagement(s) (cinemarx) is projected while we're still wondering why the girls dressed in white are being executed, the bookstore owner makes customers give him him a Third Reich salute or why there aren't any drummers as cool as Charlie Watts anymore.

This film is for true Rolling Stones or Godard fans only. If you are neither of the above you will probably have trouble sitting through the whole movie. Godard's political ramble becomes tedious at times, but watching the development of the Stones' song is priceless. Seeing the song come together as a blistering whirlwind is reward enough for repressing the urge to fast-forward through the rest of the film.

Sure, there are lots of reviews that concentrate on the sections that revolve around the African - Euopeans and Americans that interrupt the recroding session or the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. But, this is just a small part of an amazing and beautiful record of a process that created a song that will last for generations.

Watching the rhythm section work out the song, Mick working out the lyrics, Keith conducting the whole thing, Brian Jones playing remarkable keyboards, reminds us of the process of production. It took time. It took failures and it became an amazing song.

Besides that, the film is so beautifully shot is looks like it came out of an 21st century design magazine.

And please don't ignore the digressions. It is (in my humble opinion) about the appropreation of black culture by whites and white culture by blacks. An interesting diversion when you think about 1968 and Europe and the Americas. We all switch and use and sometimes it makes beautiful music.

This is an important film that should be seen by anyone going into a studio to record a song that will be remebered forever.

• I Am Media Boy.

To save you time, I'll make some broad generalizations up front. Further down I'll get more into the guts of this film, but if you're just trying to decide if this movie is worth 2hrs of your life, here's what you need to know:

If you're a hardcore Stones fan, then this film will possibly irritate you, maybe even to the point of rioting as Stones fans reportedly did at the premiere of this film in '68. This is not a documentary about the Stones nor is it a documentary at all. It's a film that Godard had been intending to make about counter-culture revolution, and it just happened to coincide with Godard filming the Stones recording "Sympathy for the Devil", so he mashed them together and this is the result.

If you're a Godard fan, you might appreciate what he tried to accomplish here, but all the same, I've never met a Godard fan who considers this among his better efforts.

With a visionary filmmaker like Godard and a very poetic & provocative song like "Sympathy for the Devil", you'd think the marriage of the two would spawn a work of art the likes of which hadn't been seen since Pink Floyd's "The Wall". (Yeah I know The Wall came out in 1982 but bear with me, I'm onna roll).

Instead I feel like the two themes didn't exactly gel. Godard took a markedly different approach which, on its own, could have been a worthy film. Rather than follow the Stones' lead with an intriguing historical narrative that leads us from Biblical times to the assassination of JFK, Godard just throws a bunch of unrelated vignettes full of superfluous political blather (intended to be tiresome) interspersed with Stones recording the song, and we are to accept that they are somehow related?

While both the song & the film make heavy use of irony & sarcasm, and while both the song & the film are about the decline of human society due to human nature ("the devil"), the Stones & Godard are on different ends of the spectrum. What makes the Stones song so memorable is its suave, seductive flair told in 1st person narrative. In the very first line, Mick introduces the devil (the speaker) as "a man of wealth and taste". Essentially, this presents a very revolutionary concept of the devil: not an, ugly, smelly, cartoonish creature with a pitchfork but a charming, hypnotizing, classy character.

It would have been great if the film had followed along this absolutely central theme, but instead it took a very base, unattractive approach that was not enticing at all. There are no classy gents playing the devil here, instead we get the Black Panthers in a squalid junkyard spouting NOT hypnotic words but pulpy rhetoric which we immediately dismiss as pointless ravings as they casually commit base murder before our eyes.

In another example, Godard sets up a comical slapstick scene in a comic book store that also sells porn & Nazi propaganda, where the customers are allowed to take what they want in exchange for a "heil Hitler" and a slap across the face of two kidnapped hippies. I thought that was a hilarious scene, but really it was jarringly incongruous with the Stones song.

Between the half dozen vignettes like the Black Panther scene & the comic book scene & scenes of someone spray painting graffiti slogans across London, we get abruptly shifted back to the studio sessions where the Stones are working out the details of their song. In contrast with the vignettes, the studio scenes are very somber, very respectful and very endearing to watch. I found myself wishing that someone actually *would* make a documentary about the "Sympathy" sessions because so much could have been expounded on. We see the slow evolution of the initial song (a gospel type ballad) to what it ultimately became, an ironically uptempo samba that draws its power from a seductive Afro-Brazilian candomblé beat. Again I'm harping on the seductiveness of the song, both lyrically and instrumentally, because it's a real shame that Godard either didn't pick up on that, or chose to go in the opposite direction with a (deliberately) unappealing visual show.

Like I said, Godard's film would have been worthy on its own. The Stones song is, of course, a great piece of literature in its own right. But sticking them both together like this just didn't stick. I'm glad I saw this film, and I'll probably watch it again. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they're ready for a very strange and jarring experience.

For a great marriage of movie & music, I would recommend the aforementioned "Pink Floyd The Wall" as well as "Tommy", a sarcastic, carnival-esque satire much like Godard's approach here but with the perfect music in the same vein, and maybe the Monkees movie "Head" which is a nearly-incomprehensible acid trip but with similarly nearly-incomprehensible lyrics that gel perfectly.