Tommy

When her husband is lost in WWII, Nora Walker is left with an unborn baby to raise by herself. Years later she has a fantastic son, Tommy, and is being courted by 'Uncle' Franks Hobbs. However when Tommy sees Frank and his mother killing his real father, he becomes psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind. This way he stays all the way through to adulthood regardless of what his mother tries to get him cured. Running away from home one night, Tommy finds himself in a junkyard where he finds an old pinball machine and begins to play it. When he turns out to be a natural born wizard on the pinball table it not only leads him to a cure but also causes a religious following to spring up around him.

Being born in the 1970's and not really being a retro type of person, I have never gotten into The Who but I am always willing to give a film a try no matter what period it is from or what genre it is. I approached Tommy with hesitancy aware that I may not like the music and that it had a reputation for being all over the place. Well, suffice to say that the latter is certainly true and if you're coming here looking for structure or decent plotting then you'll be not only disappointed but also a touch bewildered! The basic plot is an obvious swipe at religion and, as such, I'm rather surprised this film doesn't have a legacy of Catholic protests (it may do – but usually things like that stick with a film forever, like Life of Brian) following it given the amount of religious imagery in it. It doesn't totally work as it isn't clever enough to be really interesting or sharp enough to serve as a clever attack at religion. However it still manages to be great overblown fun from pretty much start to finish.

Credit where credit is due, Ken Russell doesn't run the risk of being remembered as someone who suffered in moderation – no, if he can have Ann Margaret rolling round on the floor then why not cover her in tinned food product? To that end his direction is relentlessly over the top and it actually helps the material because the plot and music are both over the top and revelling in 1970's excesses. It is never funny in a comedy sense but it is fun in the same way as going to a big show like Rock Horror can be, it's hard not to get caught up in the music, performances and sights of the film as everyone is really overdoing it and it's fun! Not being a fan of The Who, I was still won over by the music here – like a west end show mixed with rock and served on top of sliced ham, it is catchy, overblown and enjoyable to listen to. The cast also help and all manage to deliver their lines well even if some of them are not singers as their day jobs.

In fact the cast is a big part of this film working quite as well as it did – their performances mostly match the overblown feel of the film. Daltry isn't a great actor but he does well here apart from the odd slip up. Ann Margaret chews the scenery with every chance and her performance is memorable (and I think was Oscar nominated – but I may be wrong). Reed hams it up like a good'un and appears to be enjoying himself immensely – although given the people involved in this film and the legendary habits he had I would not be surprised if it was something other than the film itself that gave him that lecherous leer! The real gold in the film though is a collection of cameos that may not all work but all add to the film: Tina Turner IS The Acid Queen, Elton John gets the best song of the film, Clapton doesn't make as much of an impression as I would have liked and the presence of Jack Nicholson is as good as it is surprising!

Overall this is a silly, shambolic film that makes very little sense and is not clever enough to make the points about religion that it tries to. However it is overblown, musical and fun to watch with a great collection of people from the period in small roles all through the film. It may frustrate many, which is why it is a 'cult' film as opposed to a classic hit but, for all it's flaws, I found it enjoyable and fun in a big silly OTT way!

This is a Ken Russell movie, make no mistake. It is relentlessly twisted, ugly, savage (for a sometimes humorous effect) and trippy. Russell may be the oldest flower child of all time. Surreal plot concerns a deaf-dumb-and-blind boy becoming the new Messiah to a pinball-crazed population, and the film has been accused of being too literal to The Who's rock opera source material. In this age of lavish music videos, it has also been tagged as archaic. Though nobody seems to care anymore how a film was perceived in its time, I would say the picture still succeeds in doing what was originally intended: shake an audience up with freaky visuals and propulsive music (nicely arranged). It also does something else: creates actual characters from the music, a plus due in part to the fine acting of Ann-Margret as Tommy's glamorous mother, Roger Daltrey as Tommy, Oliver Reed as Tommy's stepfather (Reed is hammy but quite game, while the role is designed as both a villain and a hero), and Tina Turner, an extremely scary presence as the Acid Queen. "Tommy" has some bummer scenes, and Russell's love for degradation occasionally made me wince, but it is a real cinematic experience. Whether it involves or alienates the viewer depends on their appreciation for the English director's constant penchant for the bizarre. **1/2 from ****

I first came across Tommy when I saw the West End theatre production about 10 years ago, and I instantly fell in love with the music and the plot. However, at the time I was only 11 years old and couldn't really appreciate the many levels to Tommy. I did watch the film pretty soon after but was constantly comparing it to the show and to me it didn't even come close.

Now I'm a little older (and hopefully wiser), I have watched the film a lot in the past couple of years and all I can say is WOW! The music is fantastic, Pete Townshend is a genius, and the way he uses it to tell the story is awesome. When you listen to the original Who album a lot is left open to the imagination as regards plot, and I think its important to realise that Ken Russell's film version is merely one interpretation of the story told by the music.

Having not seen any of Russell's other work, it's impossible for me to say that this is typical of him. However, what I will say is that the imagery he uses in the film really does spark a lot of interest, for example the hypocrisy of organised religion and icon worship (particularly when Tommy causes Marlyin Monroe to crash to the floor after the rest of the church have been "brainwashed" by the priests).

A lot of people criticise the film for its cast, particularly Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholsons' debatable singing abilities. However I feel that this only adds to the sleaziness of their characters, especially Reed's - I think if he was note perfect it would be out of character. I think Ann Margret is fantastic as Nora - it's obvious that as Tommy's mother she feels torn between the love for her son and the love for fame and money, and she portrays that really well. As for Roger Daltrey, what a voice and what a body!!

I think it's important not to take the film too seriously though, like I said it's just one interpretation. I feel that "Tommy" as a whole - the music, words, story etc can only be fully appreciated if you listen to and watch as many versions as you can in order to make your own opinion of it.

Anybody generally familiar with opera will immediately recognize that the Who's Tommy suffers from neither a weak nor outrageous nor terribly surreal nor even bizarre storyline in comparison to what passes for plot in many classic operas.

And anybody generally familiar with 1970s cinema will note that Ken Russell's envisioning of this film was actually one of a very small handful of intelligent and serious musicals produced during that decade, not a psychedelic experiment or a contribution to the avant-garde.

Many of the less complementary comments offered here on IMDb concerning this movie appear to be driven by commenters' personal opinions or prejudices about The Who or about Ken Russel, and seem to have very little to do with this film.

In 1969, The Who released their wildly innovative breakthrough album "Tommy". Written almost entirely by 23-year old Pete Townshend, Tommy was, like many albums of its time, an early example of album-oriented rock. But unlike similarly assembled LPs by the likes of Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, etc., Tommy told a story through music and lyrics.

Tommy knew his father - Captain Walker - mainly through the photograph which has stood on the nightstand next to his bed all of his young life. His mother, Nora (Ann Margaret), a war widow, has shacked up with "Uncle Frank", a well-off and well-intentioned but rather low-brow gentleman (Oliver Reed). One night, Captain Walker comes home to find his beloved wife in bed with Uncle Frank, and Uncle Frank, in a panic, kills him. Tommy witnesses this and Nora and Frank expand the trauma by shouting silence and near-catatonic autism into the young boy with the classic lines "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one, never tell a soul... what you know is the truth."

So Tommy grows up in a state of trauma-induced deafness, muteness and blindness. Guilt and sincere love drive his mother and her new husband Frank to seek every possible cure, and Townshend (and Russel) waste no opportunity to skewer religion, medical science, traditional family dynamics, and testosterone-influenced views of sexual rites of passage.

Eventually, Tommy and his mother will find their own cures - in quite unexpected places. And Tommy will offer his apparently miraculous awareness to the rest of the world as a universal form of salvation.

Although the medium of the album and the film is rock music, Tommy strings together many of the most powerful elements of classical opera. Religion plays an important, though atypical, role in Townshend's story. Allegory is a key to understanding the entire process. And both the lyrics and the film incorporate widespread and often incisive social criticism - touching on broad intellectual themes such as the escape from freedom, the subjectivity of truth, and the inherent futility and silliness of most efforts to improve the lot of humanity.

If you let yourself 'go with it' Tommy will likely take you places you've never been. I won't promise that you will like it, but rather, that if you keep your mind open and let it pour in, like most operas, Tommy will move you.

WITH REGARD TO THE FILM:

Facing a nearly impossible task, Ken Russel enlisted Townshend, Daltrey, and a host of very talented and popular musicians and actors to make Tommy. Most of the time, this works - Ann Margaret, Roger Daltrey, and cameos by Jack Nicholson, Elton John, Tina Turner and Keith Moon are all outstanding. Unfortunately, Oliver Reed, as well-cast as he was, has no vocal talent to speak of, and Eric Clapton has the on-screen charisma of a desk lamp.

Despite the common 21st century wisdom concerning the amount of experimentalism in 1970s films, films like Tommy, Rollerball, Deathrace 2000, French Connection, Solyaris, 2001, etc, were actually very few and far between during that decade. In fact, most of the films released in the 1970s were so uninventive and uninteresting that they can only be found on public domain download sites and budget mega-pack DVD sets.

Although Russell was a shoe-in for directing this film - given his longstanding interest in visualization of classical music (http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0001692/) and more challenging subjects, Tommy was - even for Russell - a wildly innovative film:

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a singing cast tells the story, set against The Who's original music, and Russell's visual story-telling is as powerful and striking here as it was in Gothic and many of his better-known films. Oliver Reed's bellowing vocalizations are a bit overbearing, and too much synthesizer is added to embellish a score which was 6-years old by the time the film was released. But the problems with the sound track are at least partly made-up for by fabulously campy musical cameos by Tina Turner and Elton John, and - FINALLY - by Daltrey's excellent performance once Tommy himself gains a voice. Ann Margaret's singing is also quite good, but, unfortunately, several of her songs are infected by Reed's brutish howling.

All considered Tommy is a must-see for open-minded film enthusiasts, and particularly those interested in the evolution of the modern musical.

Recommended.

I will say that the movie version of "Tommy" is not as good as The Who's original opera. I guess that it's hard to adapt something like that to the silver screen. But even so, this movie is an experience unlike any other. Watching it, you try to figure out how to digest all that you're seeing and make sense of it (although I would reject calling it sensory overload).

The plot of course has deaf, dumb, blind Tommy Walker (Roger Daltrey) becoming a pinball champion and developing a cult following. Daltrey has no trouble getting into the role, especially when he sings "I'm Free". Equally good - and quite perceptive - is Ann-Margret as his mother Nora, using his celebrity to enrich herself; I really liked the scene where she hallucinates soap, beans and chocolate pouring out of the TV set. Oliver Reed seems a little bit wooden as Frank, whom Nora marries when she hears that her husband has gotten killed in WWII, but he still passes. Tina Turner really goes over the top as the Acid Queen, who tries to cure Tommy. Elton John is OK as the Pinball Wizard, but I guess that anyone could have done that role. Probably the most surprising cast member is Jack Nicholson as The Specialist; I mean, who would have ever imagined Jack Nicholson of all people in a musical?* Peter Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon also appear.

All in all, director Ken Russell instills this movie with the same sensibility that we find in the rest of his movies. Maybe it seemed better in the cinema, with its quintaphonic sound. But it's still something that I recommend to everyone. In conclusion: See it...feel it...touch it...heal it.

*Just imagine musical versions of "Five Easy Pieces", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "The Shining" and "As Good As It Gets"!