Post 66: The one about the film
Jolly team outing to the cinema.
So we had to go, it would have been very odd not to go to a Hendrix biopic when we are aiming to tell a Hendrix story here at the museum and to that end it was very instructive. The 1960s original photography and film footage shown was really good and gave insightful and excellent context… then things began to go array.
It started with Hendrix playing clubs in the Village in NYC, his arrival in London in ’66 and stopping, rather suddenly, before his performance in Monterey in ’67. This was all well before he lived in Brook Street but of course it didn’t stop the filmakers recreating the Brook Street bedroom. However that was a minor error in the scheme of things; incorrect stories, imaginary characters and fictitious events littered the film.
Now I understand biopics have to use artistic license and can’t always present the facts entirely accurately usually because it would make for a boring film, but even this totally fanciful presentation of a “true story” was dull. The thing that distressed me the most though were the female characters who, to a woman, were totally unbelievable, annoying and two dimensional, I can’t conceive that this was the case. For me their improbable characters didn’t help the story and my hairy feminist side was disappointed and sad for the real people portrayed.
As an amateur it would be foolish to make any comment on the sound track although I couldn’t help but notice Zadok the Priest (by Handel) featured! Admittedly seguing from Mozart’s Requiem in some slightly odd drug induced trip scene but I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.
