A film about the fans instead of the band

January 31st, 2010

The Posters Came from the Walls is probably the best depiction of ‘fanhood’ on film I’ve ever seen.  There is little to no footage of the actual members of Depeche Mode – other than a few clips of bootlegged video. Instead, it surveys a bewildering range of Depeche Mode devotees from Tehran, to Romania, Los Angeles, London & St. Petersburg.   People who treat the lyrics as transcendental poetry, one man who was homeless for 5 years listening to the 101 album on tape on his little box everyday till going to a DM concert got him back into society, others for whom it represented freedom from the iron wall, a fervent few who worship in goth churches where the songs are listened to as hymns. I HAD NO IDEA.

Who wasn’t a Depeche Mode fan in 1987? At least if you were remotely into cultivating an intellectual/individualist brand for your highschool outcast self.  But the fact there are teenagers in Pasadena  today who worship, as in actually light incense everyday, in front of a Depeche Mode poster, that’s some kind of testimony to the music.  The filmmakers were in the house at  Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theater where it screened last night and succeeded in presenting these fans as moving, 3 dimensional people and not as freaks on parade (although the family that dresses up in robes every weekend and films themselves to DM music came close).  The name “The Posters Came from the Walls” is from a description an East German fan gives to seeing a DM concert for the first time after the Wall fell – he said, before that, living in a totalitarian state, you never expected to have the chance of seeing your heroes in real life, but going to that concert was a radical experience – it was the first time his posters came alive.

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What lies beyond the cringe

October 17th, 2009

Last night I met a different kind of hero. A hero for our times. Not in spandex and a cape, but in small but strangely loose (for how small they were) gym shorts and alternating head bands. Adventures of Power is about Power, the son of a copper miner, whose harshest word is “shoot” and whose passion is to feel the music to the point of moving inexplicably to play ‘air drums’ because his father couldn’t afford to give him an actual drum-set or drumming lessons. But this seeming deficiency turns into the hero’s greatest strength as he exhaustedly realizes after overcoming many a difficulty to get to the air drumming championships in Newark, NJ, that he doesn’t need drums, he is drums.

While full of comfortably referential moments for a generation that’s grown up on a diet of mockumentaries and fish out of water dramedies, what gilds this strange child in a layer of specialness is its song of protest and its complete surrender to what must be one of the higher states of Buddhist spirituality – a total lack of self consciousness. As we watch Power clear out rooms with his gyrations, we are taken to the point of cringing and then menacingly further till we realize that what lies beyond the cringe, if we would ever be brave enough to get there ourselves, is an innocence and freedom so pure it’s exhilarating, and we are not just relieved, we’re made proud.

Ari Gold shows us independent filmmaking at its uncompromising, auteurist best. Four years in the making, on a budget orders of magnitude less than its authentic locations and large ensemble cast would lead you to believe, each seamlessly edited moment is rich with design details and a musical texture so integrated with the story that it could have only been created along with the process, not laid down after. Songwriter, performer, producer Ethan Gold displays an astonishing intuition, stamina and range of genre talent as the soundtrack majestically becomes the spine of the film.

And so Power, with a vibrant visual and sonic landscape at his back makes his way through his adventure – to express solidarity with his father and fellow strikers at the copper mine back home and to find a place in a world where no one understands ‘no drums’.

There are several reasons why he is a hero. It would be one thing if he took us on the staple arc of ugly duckling discovering he’s a swan, or misfit triumphing over the cool kids. But Power’s insistent message is ‘we’re not better, we’re different’ and his only request of his opponent is not to be less evil, or to give up and go home, but to fight as if he means it, to take the challenge seriously. Ari Gold uses a flippant vehicle to deliver a slap in the face about being honest, about knowing when and whom to laugh at. He’s a new kind of hero because his $2,000 prize money won’t go towards a new apartment – he currently sleeps in a tent when his aunt needs to rent out his room for extra money – or to win the girl, all she wants is his soul and a bit of organic “o” cereal – and it certainly won’t go towards buying an expensive drum set. It goes half to his musical idol and half to the copper miners who’ve lost paychecks because of the strike.

The punctuated violence of the riot police is contrasted by the constancy of the miners’ passive resistance, and our own ability to tap into an eternal beat originating from our mothers’ wombs and carrying us forward, invisible, reassuring, highly idiosyncratic, yet when combined in the right moments with the beat that others dance to, supremely Powerful.

Playing in theaters this week.

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