Tommy is British Seventies enough to have captivated me for a while. Halfway through though—more or less as Tina Turner’s therapy preposterously materialises into a rather naff Tin Man prop lubricated with acid and the camera starts pulsing, again, to Ken Russell’s habit—I started to wonder if I was really liking it. Blurring creative genius with random kitsch to an arguable degree of success, Russell’s nuts and garish vision for The Who’s rock opera is quite a strange beast, at least for me. While its religious allusions might be a little on the nose, the parallel between the message of the film and the commercial attitude of its production does provide an unexpected and intriguing sense of irony. As in Roger Ebert’s words, ‘How the makers of the film feel about this commercialization can be gauged by the prominence with which the end titles inform us that the soundtrack album is available on Polydor Records. To make money on a rock opera attacking those who would make money on a rock opera: that was the brave moral stand taken by Tommy.’
Somehow attractive for being so undefinable, for its music—and for Oliver Reed’s utter beauty even as a sweaty nasty fella—it’s certainly one to watch, but not necessarily to love.
The main irony of Ken Russell’s film of The Devils is how its ridiculous and unresolved trouble with censorship mirrors the atmosphere of the times it portrays, sadly proving that in four hundred years not much has changed. If Russell clearly intended to suggest that a certain human attitude is timeless, he probably couldn’t foresee he would have become a victim of that same ignorance. It is far beyond belief that any form of sanitisation should still exist and be applied to art. Man has rarely been as prudish and obtuse in history as he is today. Too bad for us, bound to watch near samizdat copies while dodgy butchered versions are still the only ones officially available, over five decades on.
Having read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun long before seeing the cinematic adaptation, it took me a few iterations to appreciate the latter beyond its obvious virtues such as the glorious aesthetics, the masterful operatic structure, the brilliant performances, and the metaphorically algid brutalism of its architecture.
Ken Russell’s artsy take on the historical facts that seem to have fed the creativity of many over the centuries, it’s just the surface under which lies a more profound reflection. Here is the slight difference between the book and the film. Whereas the former delves with a sociological slant into the intricate intersections within the faceted culture of the time, the latter furiously focuses almost entirely on politics. Religion provides only a lame background. Even the theme of sexual repression, however apparently central, is explored without much conviction. ‘And so you must take up your little whip and start scourging your body. This is discipline. But pain is sensuality. And in its vortex spin images of horror and lust. […] Anything found in the desert of a frustrated life can bring hope. And with hope comes love. And with love comes hate.’ says Grandier to Madeleine referring to poor deranged Sister Jeanne.
Where fear and need for answers loomed over Huxley’s account in the binary sort of way that made God responsible for what was inexplicable and good, and Satan for what was unknown and felt potentially menacing, it is human greed for power and control—of any kind—what chiefly pulls the strings in the film. ‘You have seduced the people in order to destroy them!’ roars Grandier finding the city in foolish turmoil on returning after a brief exile. They have destroyed a film in order to numb any intellectual need of the audience, should shout we today, and again.
