Mark Reviews Movies: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2021

There is nothing new or particularly deep about the story told in The Velvet Underground. This documentary, directed by Todd Haynes, is about the formation, career, and end of the eponymous band. The band members, as well as their friends and colleagues and associates, tell this story, by way of interviews conducted by Haynes or archival audio. They don't have too much to say, aside from the usual: how the band formed, what they accomplished, how some personality conflicts emerged, and what the inevitable end of those battles was.

The story of a movie—any movie, even a documentary—is, of course, only part of the picture. Since Haynes is an intelligent and thoughtful filmmaker, he's aware of this fact, so this movie, while telling a fairly routine story, is presented in a somewhat uncommon way. It's a collection of images, primarily archival footage of the band and the contemporary era in which they existed, and words, taken from those interviews and that other audio.

The usual format of the narrative and the storytelling are here, as interview subjects appear on screen to fill in details about the band, its members, and their history. They aren't on screen, though, as much as we might expect. When the interviewees are present, they're often accompanied by or interrupted by that archival footage. The story they're telling matters, obviously. The way Haynes tells that tale is the more important point.

Here, we get the sense, not of history as some solid thing, but of memory as a flood of imagery and vague recollections—as well as music, in this particular story. This movie is less a biography or objective chronicle and more a time capsule—of a place, a time, a specific cultural scene, and all the anecdotes that the documentary's participants can remember.

It moves in chronological order, of course, but most of the trappings we expect—titles pointing out the names and associations or professions of interview subjects, identifying certain places, and specifying certain dates—are either omitted or made easy to ignore or miss. The images, the words, and the sounds of the Velvet Underground, as well as the people who knew the band and its members, are what really matter.

The approach kind of works, establishing a feeling of the transitory nature of everything that happened within the band and the wider culture of which they were a part. These people were here—at this particular moment in time, among this group of fellow artists, within this attitude about society and culture, with this creative goal.

It happened. That cannot be denied, but like all things in the big picture, it occurred and passed in a relative flash. Now, the Velvet Underground is no more. Its members have died or moved on to other projects. The band still exists in the music, obviously, which is played liberally on the soundtrack. Otherwise, they only survive in images, stories, and whatever influence they may have had on musicians and artists that followed them.

If the style and approach of this documentary give it a general air of melancholy and the ephemeral (which definitely becomes the central point during a climactic montage of years and decades passing), there's still the matter of the actual story being told here. It's far less wise and focused than Haynes' filmmaking suggests.

It is, indeed, the usual. We meet founding members Lou Reed, the late singer/guitarist (who tells his side of the story from beyond the grave by way of read passages from some account of his life), and John Cale, the experimental musician (whom Haynes interviewed directly for the movie). Other members, including fellow founding member Sterling Morrison (the band's rhythm guitarist, who died in 1995), are mostly overshadowed by those two men, whose shared love of musical improvisation would define most of the band's output and live-performance style—and whose respective egos would eventually dissolve the group. Drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker does have a lot to say, although she feels mostly like a supporting player in the movie's framing.

From the start, we can sense two things. First, it's clear that Haynes' approach is attuned to the notion of memory (Reed and Cale stare at or away from a camera, as old film and photographs are revealed on the other side of a split screen). Second, the actual narrative here will and does follow the usual path and beats of both individual and group biography. Reed tells the story of his childhood and early career, and then, Cale does the same. Eventually, the two meet, form the band, become deeply involved in the aspirations of Andy Warhol and his artistic Factory, and record the occasional album, while performing in front of a mostly dismissive public, with a small group of loyal fans.

The narrative, told in pieces by the band members and others, lacks insight into most of the elements we expect—the behind-the-scenes drama and, more importantly, the music (Jonathan Richman, a musician who gained access to the band as a younger fan, comes closest to getting into the form and style of the songs). That Haynes doesn't seem too concerned with such typical matters, then, is both the strength and central flaw of The Velvet Underground. It tells a familiar and shallow story in a fascinating—but not-quite-unique-enough—way.

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