Jimi: All Is By My Side (15.)
Directed by John Ridley.
Starring Andre Benjamin, Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poot, Andrew Buckley, Ruth Negga and Adrian Lester. 116 mins
You may wander in expecting a biopic but what you get is an origins story: how Jimi Hendrix went from being an unknown blues guitarist in New York in 1966 to the verge of superstardom in London in 1967. 10 Years A Slave screenwriter Ridley gives us a new angle on that most fabled of decades: this is the sixties unswung.
His story begins with the then girlfriend of Keith Richards, the very posh Linda Keith (Poots) seeing Hendrix play in a deserted club in New York. She alone recognizes his singular talent, interests Chas Chandler (Buckley) of The Animals in him and they take him over to London, form the Experience to back him and set him up with gigs around town. By the end of the film he is doing gigs for The Beatles and is about to fly off to the Monteray Pop Festival.
And that's about it really. The acting, film making and period detail are fine and sprightly but you never once have any sense of what it was that gripped Ridley so forcefully about theses people and this situation. Hendrix is written as a shy, easy going hippy star child who espouses peace and love while being in denial about the fierce sense of rock god entitlement that is growing in him and Andre Benjamin, of Outkast, captures this rather well.
At times the film seems almost to be a send up of the Swinging Sixties London, which in this film consists of dingy pubs and clubs. Early on a bland featureless youth appears on screen with a caption telling us he is Keith Richards and in a moment of subconscious pantomime the whole audience respond, Oh No You're Not. And this happens throughout the film: fresh faced nobodies appear fleetingly on screen with captions telling us they're Brian Epstein or Eric Clapton. As you sit through another languorously dreary scene in a period pub the thought might occur that if they'd just waited a few years, Withnail and I would be happening around the corner.
Directed by John Ridley.
Starring Andre Benjamin, Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poot, Andrew Buckley, Ruth Negga and Adrian Lester. 116 mins
You may wander in expecting a biopic but what you get is an origins story: how Jimi Hendrix went from being an unknown blues guitarist in New York in 1966 to the verge of superstardom in London in 1967. 10 Years A Slave screenwriter Ridley gives us a new angle on that most fabled of decades: this is the sixties unswung.
His story begins with the then girlfriend of Keith Richards, the very posh Linda Keith (Poots) seeing Hendrix play in a deserted club in New York. She alone recognizes his singular talent, interests Chas Chandler (Buckley) of The Animals in him and they take him over to London, form the Experience to back him and set him up with gigs around town. By the end of the film he is doing gigs for The Beatles and is about to fly off to the Monteray Pop Festival.
And that's about it really. The acting, film making and period detail are fine and sprightly but you never once have any sense of what it was that gripped Ridley so forcefully about theses people and this situation. Hendrix is written as a shy, easy going hippy star child who espouses peace and love while being in denial about the fierce sense of rock god entitlement that is growing in him and Andre Benjamin, of Outkast, captures this rather well.
At times the film seems almost to be a send up of the Swinging Sixties London, which in this film consists of dingy pubs and clubs. Early on a bland featureless youth appears on screen with a caption telling us he is Keith Richards and in a moment of subconscious pantomime the whole audience respond, Oh No You're Not. And this happens throughout the film: fresh faced nobodies appear fleetingly on screen with captions telling us they're Brian Epstein or Eric Clapton. As you sit through another languorously dreary scene in a period pub the thought might occur that if they'd just waited a few years, Withnail and I would be happening around the corner.
