The Themes I see in Velvet Goldmine

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2006)

This is definitely a discredited movie in my eyes. It is shocking to me that one of the man criticisms of this film was its disregard for accuracy. However I feel its accuracy is beyond any one who isn't a complete bowie iggy, or Oscar wilde fan. The point of the movie was not to portray David Bowie's exact life line, it was to portray the wild ride of 3 people going through this transient mist barely resembling life. At the same time going back to themes found in The Picture of Dorian Gray, using it as a moral guide line for the character whose musical career is loosely based off of David Bowie, simply because he experienced these times a its peak, and left a trace of some surreal icon. If the movie were written as a biography of David Bowie, or Iggy Pop, or Brian Eno, it would not of been fitting to any of the three stars. The only way you can present these characters is in a fictional event such as Velvet Goldmine, hinting at its origins with little facts. Like the guitar licking scene, the scene when Brian Slade meets Curt Wilde he is presented in the same way David Bowie's wife met lou reed. Brian's first words to Mandy's are the same as Angie's first words to Bowie. Bowie's costume designer did marry his manager, etc. etc.. Subtle points are given simply to enrich a plot line not just revolving around the seventies or Dorian Gray, but revolving around this loss of innocence, this rebellion, the drugs, everything. This same theme that is shown in citizen cane. The structural ground for the work is even the same, advocating the journalist as a tool to tell the tale, working through people of the past. This theme in Velvet Goldmine is shown with beauty and grace, not in words but through half fictional characters of the past, because of their beauty. Not many cult films can be read in to that much. Which is why I idolize Velvet Goldmine not as a biography, or a retelling or anything, but as a film.