‘Excessive’,
‘bawdy’, ‘shifty’, ‘flamboyant’, ‘extreme’, ‘tawdry’, ‘absurd’, ‘shocking’,
‘transgressive’ and ‘anachronistic’ are among some of the adjectives forever
synonymous with the late celebrated British enfant terrible Ken Russell.
The self-proclaimed ‘savior of British cinema’ was then and is now a difficult pill for many people to swallow. Known for Women in Love, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Tommy, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, The Lair of the White Worm, the prolific filmmaker achieved a legacy that is at once universally revered and tragically overlooked as much of his oeuvre remains unavailable in the United States. A singular artist and provocateur spoken of the same breath as Fellini or Gilliam, Russell’s closest compatriot may be the equally neglected British provocateur Peter Greenaway for his ornate visual style and desire to provoke outrage with an inextricable mixture of artifice and realism.
The self-proclaimed ‘savior of British cinema’ was then and is now a difficult pill for many people to swallow. Known for Women in Love, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Tommy, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, The Lair of the White Worm, the prolific filmmaker achieved a legacy that is at once universally revered and tragically overlooked as much of his oeuvre remains unavailable in the United States. A singular artist and provocateur spoken of the same breath as Fellini or Gilliam, Russell’s closest compatriot may be the equally neglected British provocateur Peter Greenaway for his ornate visual style and desire to provoke outrage with an inextricable mixture of artifice and realism.
Both
a master filmmaker and an impishly subversive trickster, Russell often worked
in historical period dramas of recognized artistic or musical figures while
clearly placing his own spin on the proceedings, taking grandiose artistic
liberties with the text often for cartoonish or outlandish effect. His most commercially successful film to date
for instance, the Hollywood produced psychedelic science fiction thriller Altered States, features a detour where
the narrative completely and deliberately jumps the shark into farce before
successfully coming back to sci-fi horror. Much of Russell’s career defining work in the
BBC Television Network and earlier feature film projects can be characterized
this way, with one foot on this side of reality with the other quick to
abruptly step into lunacy.
This very conundrum inherent in all of his work forms the center of Russell’s vision and explains the ease with which the auteur was able to rouse anger and disgust in his detractors. You really aren’t sure how seriously Russell himself is taking his own work while watching it, bearing the capacity to win you over with playfulness or just turn you off with the boundaries being pushed. Not everyone shared Russell’s sense of humor or appreciated his edginess as the director often ran into trouble with censors, distributors and sometimes the subjects themselves. His short film on composer Richard Strauss, Dance of the Seven Veils, was blocked by Strauss’ estate until the copyright on his music expires in 2019 and his greatest film The Devils remains banned in the United States by the studio which financed it.
Not
for all tastes but far from one to ignore, Ken Russell’s grand and often carnivalesque
cinematic visions remain timeless in their ability to enthrall and enrage in
equal measure and still display a narrative hook and technical proficiency
years ahead of other filmmakers at the time.
With this, the Movie Sleuth takes a look at three of Russell’s
celebrated earlier works in independent British cinema, all of which in their
own way are essential viewing yet only form individually a small piece of the
puzzle comprising this still divisive, perverse and often brilliant director’s
eclectic filmography.
Women in Love (1969)
Ken
Russell’s loose, provocative and ultimately brilliant adaptation of British
author D.H. Lawrence’s celebrated controversial novel Women in Love about two sisters, Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula
(Jennie Linden) Brangwen and two men, Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and Rupert
Birkin (Alan Bates) in post WWI England in the Midlands who embark on their own
respective journeys towards love and heartbreak was the filmmaker’s first foray
into the mainstream and cemented his reputation as one of Britain’s great
directors. It also established the
continuing actor/director working relationships with Oliver Reed and Glenda
Jackson who give daring and pitch perfect performances, going the full distance
while exuding deeply felt emotions.
It’s
now legendary naked wrestling scene involving Oliver Reed and Alan Bates was a
milestone in breaking censorship laws with it’s taboo full frontal male nudity. While Russell himself would downplay the film’s
success in later years, this was the first time Britain’s soon to be enfant
terrible carved out his niche in the pantheon of world cinema’s greatest
intellectual provocateurs, breaking boundaries while reaching unparalleled artistic
heights. Elegantly photographed by Oscar
nominated cinematographer Billy Williams with sumptuous costume design by the
director’s wife Shirley Russell, Women in
Love lovingly recreates Britain’s 1920s with the line dividing the
aristocracy and the middle class becoming further blurred with time. Functioning as a snapshot of the past,
particularly in the opening credits sequence of the free spirited and well-dressed
Brangwen sisters walking amid dirtied coal miners, suggests a sharp contrast
between the two worlds of the wealthy and impoverished slowly converging.
Paving
the way for comparatively lighter fare like Downton
Abbey, Women in Love by contrast
represents emotional complexity rarely explored on film up to that point with
the sexuality serving to further drive home the state of the characters’ relationships
rather than merely titillate. Moreover
in the film than the novel, Women in Love
dares to explore the loose homosexuality between male friendships and the
role it plays in heterosexual relationships with one gaining strength while the
other becomes increasingly destructive.
Much like Far from the Madding
Crowd, the film and novel are an examination of the overarching influence
the region and social structures of the time had on the people inhabiting
it. Though many will philosophically
argue the more things change the more they stay the same, Russell seems to
suggest as with his later film The Devils
the period being depicted is something of a time capsule that only existed
in that moment.
Incidentally, Women in Love wound up paving the road for what would become his anachronistic Tchaikovsky biopic The Music Lovers, sharing it’s themes of closeted homosexuality, hysterics, self-destruction and in a way a medical study. Although of Russell’s films Women in Love and later Savage Messiah seem to be the most straightforward in approach with little to none of the trademark surrealism and over the top set pieces, of his work it’s the most successful in terms of box office draw and critical adulation. Visually in terms of the deliberate contradictions being juxtaposed together as well as his use of the zoom lens, Women in Love manages to be dynamic without going overboard. There’s so much scenic beauty on display with such passionate performances at the epicenter, the experience is hypnotizing and for my money represents the pinnacle of late 1960s British cinema. While The Devils will always remain my personal favorite Russell effort, Women in Love comes pretty close to rivaling that film’s cinematic excellence.
Score:
The Music Lovers (1970)
The
first of many biopics on famous international musical composers the director
would tackle and arguably the first time Russell showed off his impish, bawdy
and subversive sensibility, the director’s 1970 biography of 19th
century Russian composer Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) is that
rare film that enhances your appreciation for the famed musician’s work even as
it distances you away from the man himself.
Seen as a tragic figure from the start, The Music Lovers attempts to portray Tchaikovsky’s internal war
within himself as he struggles to maintain an upstanding public image to
further his musical career while hiding his closet homosexuality from being
seen and the ensuing damage caused by his ruse.
Along the way Tchaikovsky courts the financial support of Madame
Nadezhda von Meck (Izabella Telezynska) while forming a marital bond with
Antonina Miliukova (Glenda Jackson), all the while suppressing his homosexual
longings for Count Anton Chiluvsky (Christopher Gable).
Told
through a series of flashbacks and dreams set to Tchaikovsky’s music
interspersed with voiceover narration from Tchaikovsky himself, we’re whisked
into the minds of those who knew him as well as offering up Russell’s own
anachronistic fantastical visions the Russian composer may or may not have
had. Utilizing his trademark
hyperkinetic editing, aided by Derek Jarman’s spectacular set design and being
the one and only Russell film shot by the great Douglas Slocombe, The Music Lovers doesn’t offer up a
straight faced biopic so much as it provides a glimpse into the mind of
Tchaikovsky with an increasingly grotesque and at times perversely disturbing
edge.
Those
accustomed to the usual tropes associated with the musical composer biopic will
be in for quite a shock at the dark and dirty tunnels Russell’s film travels
down with some episodes more horrific than others. Among the more tragic chapters in
Tchaikovsky’s life involves a flashback where the composer recalls his mother’s
horrific death to cholera and the boiling water treatment administered to
cholera victims at the time. Equally
upsetting is the fate of his wife Miliukova, a nymphomaniac he cannot express
physical sexual love to which winds up driving her mad before subjecting
herself to a series of sexual degradations worse than most movies today could
dare to depict. Even though this came
only a year before his most infamous masterwork The Devils, there were times during The Music Lovers where I wanted to look away from the tragedies
unfolding onscreen.
One
must also go into Russell’s film as an experience and not take every ounce of
it as fact, as the film indeed includes deliberate anachronisms. For instance, the character of Count
Chiluvsky never existed but is a composite of Tchaikovsky’s many gay lovers
though it was known his marriage to Miliukova was an effort to cloak his sexual
orientation. The film also dramatizes a
fictionalized meet between Tchaikovsky and von Meck when in reality the two
only bumped into each other by accident and Miliukova’s institutionalization
didn’t occur until after Tchaikovsky’s death despite the film showing her
descent into self-destructive madness occurring much earlier.
As
always, Russell’s performers act the Hell out of their roles with Richard
Chamberlain (incidentally also a closet homosexual at the time) giving a pitch
perfect portrayal of the troubled composer torn between revealing himself or
continuing the ride the crest wave enjoyed by his musical success. Glenda Jackson, fresh off her Oscar win for
Russell’s Women in Love, might be one
of the most fearless actresses of the 1970s.
Going the full distance as the distraught and frustrated nymphomaniac
who begins to realize her marriage to Tchaikovsky only used her as a stand in,
Jackson almost rivals the insanity portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils with zero fear of sex and
nudity. The Music Lovers also features Russell’s stock trade of character
actors including Kenneth Colley (Admiral Piett from The Empire Strikes Back), Max Adrian, Andrew Faulds and Graham
Armitage, many of whom would also appear in The
Devils and The Boyfriend.
The Music Lovers is by no means an easy watch with some of Russell’s transgressions and
anachronisms capable of infuriating if not offending the faint hearted. At the time of inception, many critics took
umbrage with Russell’s portrayal of Tchaikovsky and some began to wonder just
how much of it was based in truth and how much of it was pure Russell. Seen now, with some reservations the film is
startlingly on point with regard to the many chapters in Tchaikovsky’s
checkered past though there’s still debate to this day whether or not his own
contraction of cholera was accidental or self-inflicted. Many including Roger Ebert took Russell to
task for including dream sequences attempting to dramatize what Tchaikovsky and
others were thinking while listening to his music, including one truly
outlandish bit where Tchaikovsky fires off a phallic looking cannon at the
heads of everyone in his life who has hurt him, replete with gory close ups of
the decapitated.
What is undeniable about The Music Lovers is that it illustrates perfectly how such wonderful music beloved all over the world can emerge from anger, frustration and desperation. Tchaikovsky had a lot of skeletons in his closet, some uglier than others, yet none of it is heard in his music which can be described as the purest expression of joy. While open to debate just how many of Tchaikovsky’s hurdles were through no fault of his own and how many more were clearly entirely his undoing, there’s no question that through it all the man was still able to create some of the finest classical music in human history irrespective of the tragedies occurring during their creation.
Score:
Savage Messiah (1972)
After
the exhausting shoots for The Devils and
The Boyfriend, Russell reportedly
remortgaged his home to finance his next project which would sharply veer away
from the opulent excesses he came to be known for in favor of something closer
to his own struggles as a budding still photographer trying to break into the
film scene. Dialing down the
hallucinatory intensity and transgression seen in his last two films The Music Lovers and The Devils, Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah dramatizes the life of
French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Scott Anthony) with a surprising amount
of restraint and understatement. Working
from a script by Christopher Logue who himself played Cardinal Richelieu in The Devils, Savage Messiah is the closest the director has come to making a
minimalist picture, providing an engaging period drama without indulging in the
usual excesses he came to be infamous for.
After
seeing the provocateur at his most over-the-top and deliberately shocking, Savage Messiah provides a startling
antithesis to what critics and audiences thought they came to know about
Russell with this straightforward drama depicting the iconoclastic
Gaudier-Brzeska on the rise to artistic success while balancing the unorthodox
but committed relationship with the twenty years elder Sophia Brzeska (Dorothy
Tutin). As with The Music Lovers, the film focuses on the disconnected relationship
the artist has with his wife. Unlike
that film, however, which portrayed the destructive co-dependent relationship
with hallucinatory shock, Savage Messiah aside
from a couple moments of bombast is decidedly comparatively understated. Also antithetical to The Music Lovers is the nature of the relationship, which is all
but totally sexless and devoid of intimacy yet functional just enough for
Brzeska and Gaudier to make it work for one another. Despite the age difference and Brzeska’s
knowledge that Gaudier would go out at night to fool around with prostitutes to
get off somehow, their mutual alliance and creative passions are undeniable and
illustrate the duo as soulmates rather than lovers.
Much
like Pasolini’s bits in The Decameron,
Savage Messiah fully conveys the
starving artist struggle as Gaudier and Brzeska shack up in a squalid
impoverished flat and spend hours up all night striving tirelessly to create
commissioned sculptures to be delivered on time as ordered. You feel every ounce of sweat and dirt
pouring down the dedicated individuals foreheads and Russell wastes no time
illustrating the dichotomy between those creating the art and the well to do socialites
enjoying said art. Adding to the sharp
contrast is a young Helen Mirren as Gosh Boyle, a wealthy suffragette who is
everything Sophia Brzeska is not: young, voluptuous in figure and unafraid of
sex and nudity. Helen Mirren might be
the eldest actress living today who still carries a heavy scent of sex appeal
and her scenes of the free spirited Boyle walking around in nothing but
stilettos signify Mirren as among the sexiest actresses in the film
business. Russell even provides moments
of Boyle and Brzeska in the same scene together when Boyle visits Gaudier’s
flat and jumps into bed with him, stirring the jealousies of Brzeska despite
her own disgust for sex.
Russell has always been interested in what Warner Brothers referred to as ‘historic personages’, particularly ones not of British descent, but Savage Messiah represents something of an outlier in Russell’s oeuvre for telling the struggles of creative expression without so much as toe dipping into his usual subversions fans and detractors came to love and hate. Moreover, it displays how love, friendship and commitment can exist between two vastly different individuals separated by decades of age and carnal proclivities while never losing sight of their mutual dedication to creating art despite the uphill battle of doing so. Cited by Guillermo Del Toro as among his favorite Russell films for what he called ‘having to be iconoclastic in every area of life in order to be an artist’, Savage Messiah is the story of a little known sculptor in the art world whose struggle and strive for creative expression is almost totally universal in appeal and something anyone who has ever picked up a paintbrush, ballpoint pen for movie camera can absolutely relate to.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki