The Sparks Brothers. (12.)
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Featuring Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Giorgio Moroder, Jane Wieldlin, Mike Myers and Tony Visconti. In cinemas July 30th. Live Q&A with Edgar Wright in cinemas July 29th. 141 mins.
Italian food may be the best in the world but it's only ever a choice of two: the pasta or the pizza, the pizza or the pasta. Sparks may be one of the greatest pop bands ever – totally underrated yet ubiquitously influential - but when it comes to classic tracks it's This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us or Beat The Clock. Those two songs have kept pop music's most celebrated double-act – Russell, the frizzy-haired Marc Bolan one; Ron, the Hitler one – going for over half a century.
(Influential? They set the blueprint for every synth duo since – the flamboyant vocalist and the taciturn keyboard artist. Everyone except the Pet Shop Boys who went for having both parts taciturn and grumpy.)
British director Edgar (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) Wright is a big fan and his lockdown project was to make a documentary about them, particularly as the brothers Mael write and appear in the latest Leos Carax movie, Annette, the opening night film at Cannes this year's. Disappointingly, this band like no other get a rockumentary just all the others. You know the drill: an album by album life story plus talking heads - usually Jonathan Ross, Paul Morley and three others - saying how great said artist is/ was. The only difference for Sparks is in the range and quantity of fan testimony. At the start Beck says that if you sit on any tour bus with musicians, "eventually the conversation will go to Sparks," and all musicians (and various comedians, writers and presenters) have turned out for this. It's Jonathan Ross, Paul Morley and about fifty other people almost all of whom you'll have heard of
The key to their appeal is the enigma. How could this improbable pair – one Smash Hits, the other Kafkaesque - be brothers? How could this archetypal English band be Californians? Obviously, making this portrait has the potential to wreck all that. Can the mystery survive finding out Russ used to be a college quarterback? That they both used to surf? Seeing inside their recording studio? Yes, and quite easily so. You can be told and shown every aspect of their existence and they will remain utterly unknowable.
Unnerving too. After Jimmy Savile, Ron Mael was the creepiest person ever to become a celebrity. In the seventies, when the Top Of The Pops studio was home to many undesirable characters, his stares into camera disturbed and perturbed like no other. That's your skin, crawling. The film assures us that this was all image, a way for the songwriter to carve out a role on stage next to his cuter younger brother. Five decades on, time has levelled up things. Beret wearing Ron resembles a Robert Crumb cartoon of a French intellectual and possibly less weird than his still youthful brother and the jet black blob of Lego hair that has been squirted onto his head.
Their extensive celebrity fan networks may ultimately be the film's biggest problem. They are all so convinced, so certain of Sparks' singular brilliance, and so pleased with themselves for recognising it, that they don't reach out to the passing and unconvinced audience. I came hoping/ expecting to be converted, to find some new favourites other than This Town and Beat The Clock but though the subsequent Youtube search has been pleasant it hasn't been revelatory. (Depressingly, like a boring rock fan, I think it is the humour and the emotional distance that puts me off.) The film is constantly telling you how clever their music is, but it doesn't demonstrate it. They are good, but they ain't The Associates.
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Featuring Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Giorgio Moroder, Jane Wieldlin, Mike Myers and Tony Visconti. In cinemas July 30th. Live Q&A with Edgar Wright in cinemas July 29th. 141 mins.
Italian food may be the best in the world but it's only ever a choice of two: the pasta or the pizza, the pizza or the pasta. Sparks may be one of the greatest pop bands ever – totally underrated yet ubiquitously influential - but when it comes to classic tracks it's This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us or Beat The Clock. Those two songs have kept pop music's most celebrated double-act – Russell, the frizzy-haired Marc Bolan one; Ron, the Hitler one – going for over half a century.
(Influential? They set the blueprint for every synth duo since – the flamboyant vocalist and the taciturn keyboard artist. Everyone except the Pet Shop Boys who went for having both parts taciturn and grumpy.)
British director Edgar (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) Wright is a big fan and his lockdown project was to make a documentary about them, particularly as the brothers Mael write and appear in the latest Leos Carax movie, Annette, the opening night film at Cannes this year's. Disappointingly, this band like no other get a rockumentary just all the others. You know the drill: an album by album life story plus talking heads - usually Jonathan Ross, Paul Morley and three others - saying how great said artist is/ was. The only difference for Sparks is in the range and quantity of fan testimony. At the start Beck says that if you sit on any tour bus with musicians, "eventually the conversation will go to Sparks," and all musicians (and various comedians, writers and presenters) have turned out for this. It's Jonathan Ross, Paul Morley and about fifty other people almost all of whom you'll have heard of
The key to their appeal is the enigma. How could this improbable pair – one Smash Hits, the other Kafkaesque - be brothers? How could this archetypal English band be Californians? Obviously, making this portrait has the potential to wreck all that. Can the mystery survive finding out Russ used to be a college quarterback? That they both used to surf? Seeing inside their recording studio? Yes, and quite easily so. You can be told and shown every aspect of their existence and they will remain utterly unknowable.
Unnerving too. After Jimmy Savile, Ron Mael was the creepiest person ever to become a celebrity. In the seventies, when the Top Of The Pops studio was home to many undesirable characters, his stares into camera disturbed and perturbed like no other. That's your skin, crawling. The film assures us that this was all image, a way for the songwriter to carve out a role on stage next to his cuter younger brother. Five decades on, time has levelled up things. Beret wearing Ron resembles a Robert Crumb cartoon of a French intellectual and possibly less weird than his still youthful brother and the jet black blob of Lego hair that has been squirted onto his head.
Their extensive celebrity fan networks may ultimately be the film's biggest problem. They are all so convinced, so certain of Sparks' singular brilliance, and so pleased with themselves for recognising it, that they don't reach out to the passing and unconvinced audience. I came hoping/ expecting to be converted, to find some new favourites other than This Town and Beat The Clock but though the subsequent Youtube search has been pleasant it hasn't been revelatory. (Depressingly, like a boring rock fan, I think it is the humour and the emotional distance that puts me off.) The film is constantly telling you how clever their music is, but it doesn't demonstrate it. They are good, but they ain't The Associates.
