The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes' artful documentary on the pioneering art rock band fronted by Lou Reed and John Cale takes almost 40 minutes before Reed and Cale even meet. Haynes doesn't use narration but he builds his movie with ample footage from the time period. He creatively makes the link between the avant-garde and the "underground" which sets the stage for the band to flourish.

By hooking up with Andy Warhol and becoming his 'house band', the Velvet Underground not only got attention, but it also guaranteed that film and still photography would document their every move. They never sold many records at the time, but their influence was profound.

The interview subjects range from John Waters to Warhol scenesters like Mary Woronov, to go along with the generous archive footage. It paints a vivid picture of the rise and premature fall of the group (Co-founder John Cale only appeared on the first two albums; singer Nico only on their debut). Reed, of course, became a rock icon as a solo artist, but, the band's impact stands apart as a singular achievement, something which Haynes captures brilliantly.

Very much enjoyed this, as a fan of the bands music, I'm not sure I learned much that I didn't know before but I loved seeing a lot of this archive footage and photographs, which I don't think have been seen before publicly.

Its very much a celebration of the bands music and legacy and a few of the interviews made me laugh and the closing montage may have made me cry a little. What more can you ask from a film?

I did find the Warhol style a little jarring at the beginning, with some of the flashing imagery, but it did calm down and seems fully appropriate to the subject and so much better than it being a dull series of interviews with talking heads... And while there were interviews with the remaining members of band and the scene they were all completely relevant, thankfully we didn't get a series of other fans or celebrities talking about the band and themselves. The film also did really well including those members who are no longer with us and it really felt that the whole band was featured and represented here.

It is not an encyclopedic history of the band which some people perhaps wanted, I guess you'd need a six or eight hour miniseries to cover that, or you could just read one of the many books and biographys that exist. Like I say I love the bands music and the artists subsequent careers, I don't know how the film would play if you were not familiar with Warhol and the band already but for me it was a perfectly judged and very enjoyable two hours.

Pieced together almost as strangely as the band itself, this doc features excellent profiles of each band member and those closest to them. Was nice to have insight from people like John Waters, and who knew Jackson Browne was once involved with something that didn't suck?

Loved the early footage of Lou Reed and the band playing doo-wop.

It was not the full three-sixty on the band, but centers on their sound in the Reed-Cale era and rather than spend much time on theory, it focuses on who Lou and John were as people in order to explain it, delving into the environment they lived and created in. It also eventually compares them to contemporaries, but again, here it prefers to compare who they were in attitude and emotion. When John and Lou split, when the band starts winding down, the movie also starts winding down. I'm fine with all that. Visually, I felt like it was interesting, but not mind blowing. Personally, I didn't need to it to be a visual masterpiece to be satisfying. I didn't need it to interview every former flat mate or girlfriend, I didn't need it to chase down every subplot in the band, I didn't need a happy ending. I wanted a piece on Lou and John and what made the band what they were. It's a two-hour piece on that.

As "The Velvet Underground" (2021 release; 115 min.) opens, we are introduced to young Lou Reed, whose family moved out to Long Island when he was 7, the start of a long journey that eventually sees him landing in Manhattan in the early 60s. We then shift to John Cale's background and early life in Wales, where he learns the viola. He ends up in New York in 1963. The movie reminds us what life in New Yok was like in the early 60s: "we are not counter-culture, we ARE the culture." At this point we are 10 min into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest film from acclaimed director Todd Haynes ("I'm Not There", "Carol", "Dark Wates"). In other words: this pretty much guaranteed that this would not be your typical rock documentary . It's also not just about the Velvet Underground, but the whole New York arts scene in the 1960s including Andy Warhol's Factory. "It was Andy Warhol who made the first album possible", claims a talking head (implying that without the famous cover art and with Nico's presence, the debut album would've never seen the light of day). Ah yes, Nico. She gets her due as well, and then some. Along the way we get treated to a slew of rare if ever before seen film footage and photos from that era. The first hour of this documentary, which carries us up and through 1965, is a perfect 5 stars, and had me just watching in complete fascinations with it all. The second hour of the documentary is not nearly as good. Much of the talking heads' (including surviving members John Cale and Maureen Tucker) interviews was filmed in 2018. (Did you know that Jackson Browne regularly played with Nico during her early solo gigs?)

"The Velvet Underground" premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim, and Apple TV eagerly snapped it up. The movie was released in select theaters for a limited run, and thankfully my art-house theater here in Cincinnati had it in its lineup as from this weekend. The Saturday matinee show where I saw this at was attended so-so (7 people in total including myself). If you are a fan of the Velvet Underground or are simply interested in a slice of rock history. I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (while you still can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.