Music has been a part of film since its inception. Even as silent films ran, an accompanying piano or orchestra served as the soundtrack. But as the years wore on, different genres and artists burst onto the silver screen in a multitude of projects. Many have been complimentary but of their time (Spice World comes to mind.) Others like Mariah Carey’s ill-fated Glitter got panned as vanity projects. And then there is Pavements.
Directed by nouveau indie darling Alex Ross Perry, it is very hard to describe this in one word. Wikipedia says it best, calling this a docu-fiction. I would describe it as Spinal Tap for the sell-aware Gen-X crowd, only the band isn’t fake. If you grew up listening to indie rock in the 90s, you would have come across this little band from Stockton California at some point. I did in 1999, just as the band was about to implode. Most viewers will know them as the pretentious band one of the Kens drones on about to a complacent Barbie in the latter half of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster. It would only be fitting that she and writing/life partner Noah Baumbach show up to ingratiate the band.
It would seem that the movie came about just as Pavement were about to perform reunion shows. So it would only serve to make a documentary on the band and this subsequent tour. But cue the record scratch as the film takes a weird turn (weird if you don’t know the band) from simple recounting of events and archive footage to screen tests for a proposed biopic. And one narrative thread snakes off like an alternate reality. One sequence shows Djo singer and Stranger Things star Joe Kerry as he falls deeper into an abyss in an attempt to method act his way into real Pavement singer Stephen Malkmus. A feat that, in the words of this reviewer, would be utterly irrelevant given what a sophomoric goof—off Malkmus really is. It is almost like a parody of the self-serious critics and fans that Gerwig was herself making fun of, a kind of satiric ouroboros if you will.
Still another thread that is woven in is an off-Broadway stage production titled “Slanted, Enchanted!”, based around the band’s music. We witness its director and stars as their rehearsals and final product is edited into the film at key moments to emphasize pivotal highlights in Pavement’s career (or cor-rea as they would sing). I thought this would be just another meta element, some imagined possibility like the biopic. But no, this really did happen in 2022. So many parts of this film are hard to pin down, much like the band themselves. A fitting portrait of a musical group has never been this meticulous but come off so shambolic. Pavements has been making the rounds in theaters or is streaming on the Mubi platform. Check it out if you are into the band or just zany music film experiences in general.
Much less confusing is Miley Cyrus’s short film to her latest album Something Beautiful on Disney Plus. Billed as a rock opera filled with visions of sci-fi fantasy, I was stunned to find a rather old-school event featuring a pop star augmenting their music with amazing visuals. And that isn’t bad at all. In fact, it is the best way to experience this new music in the first place. YouTube has hosted parts taken out as music videos for singles. But this is an instance where the whole is greater than the some of its parts.
Sporting Thierry Mugler like a haute couture alien as drum hits and explosions go off, I was half reminded of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. The former was part of her inspiration here after all. This is the type of over-the-top production you would see Michael Jackson release at the height of his popularity. The visual album does wane in the second half, despite an interesting spoken word from supermodel Naomi Campbell. All I can say is, this girl can work.
