Review of Velvet Goldmine, directed by Todd Haynes

Despite Velvet Goldmine being a cult classic in the movie world, I had actually never heard of the film before one day I was scrolling on my Instagram and saw a video posted by MUBI about it. They had posted the scene with the centaur costume going into the chimney and the musical number that ensues after. I was cackling when I saw this and then sent it to my best friend, who also thought it was the weirdest thing she’d seen in awhile and then asked what the movie was. Because MUBI had posted it, I booted up my subscription and was very pleased to see it was indeed available in the United States,

So that night I watched it. Before I was quite unfamiliar with the work by the director, Todd Haynes, and I had to look him up afterwards. Turns out he did Carol, which I had watched a month prior to watching this one. Regardless, I wasn’t familiar with his work outside of that, and I think he’s someone I want to take a closer look at when it comes to his filmography. It seems like he runs through a lot of themes and symbolism that I would be interested in analyzing later as a critic.

Anyways, here’s my review on Velvet Goldmine!

In the seventies, pop star Brian Slade fakes his own death. Years later, a journalist tries to get to the bottom of it.

So a chunk of this film serves as an homage of sorts to the counterculture happening in Great Britain during the 1970s, as the pop star that is the central character of this film, Brian Slade, was a key part of the scene (he is fictional, but for the movie’s sake, he’s a key part of it). He’s active in glam rock specifically, and grew up becoming very aware of the fact he was not fully straight. In the film, his parents struggle with the fact that their son probably is a homosexual, which leads to Slade’s development as a musician even further. We gets these snippets of his rise to the top and how he interacted with others in the local scene, but, during a performance, Brian decides to arrange a fake shooting.

So the gunman sets of his gun in the middle of one of Brian’s performances, he falls to the ground, seemingly having been shot. The audience is screaming because of course they think the singer has just been killed in front of their own eyes. But as it turns out and is revealed by the press later, all of this was a hoax. Brian arranged to have his own fake shooting that night, which leads to a public downfall when it comes to his public image.

That’s the initial story we’re fed as an audience, but then things are about to get spiced up. Now in the eighties, the film follows the journalist Arthur Stuart as he tries to track down Brian Slade after the hoax happened. He goes around interviewing the people in Brian’s life, trying to get the facts and accounts on the record about what really happened during this time. As this is happening, it leads to musical numbers and vignettes about that period of Slade’s life they’re describing.

There’s also something major revealed during this: Slade got married early on in his career to a woman named Mandy. However, he was very much bisexual and apart of the gay culture at that time, and was even one of the icons of the movement during the seventies. When he meets an American man when in the United States, rock star Curt Wild, the two end up becoming more tangled in a way that was part of their downfall at the end of the day.

We learn through the friends and acquaintances that they got big heads as they continued to grow in their careers, and this leads to personal and mental breakdowns throughout their time as celebrities. Eventually, this is what pushes Brian Slade to fake his own murder on stage, and that’s also what ended his career. The backlash was immense, as I mentioned before, and people didn’t think it was cool that he pretended to get shot while performing. I can see why—that takes performance art to the next level and can be traumatizing, or even triggering for some.

The film progresses where Stuart is taken off the story and given another, which is to cover the tour of Tommy Stone. Ironically, Tommy Stone is literally just Brian Slade in disguise. He’s continued his music career after all this time. We also learn that Arthur Stuart was at that concert where Slade pretended to get shot, and had a sexual encounter with Curt Wild. As it turns out, the film ends with Arthur and Curt meeting again, and Curt hands over a piece of jewelry that belonged to Oscar Wilde—that’s some heavy-handed symbolism right there.

Overall Thoughts

It was a fascinating movie to watch. It wasn’t my favorite, that’s for sure, but I think I can easily see why this kind of movie became a cult classic in the end. I think I like Todd Haynes’ work overall, as there were some interesting ideas and concepts floating about in how this story was unfolding. The twists at the end were a little too on the nose for me, but I believe this captures the essence of the time period. It’s also a film that feels like it belongs in the nineties in the end, which I could appreciate from a visual and technical standpoint. Definitely watch it if you haven’t already if this seems up your alley.

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