Sympathy For The Devil
Revolutionary politics, whether it be The Bolsheviks in the 1910s or the more recent âQâ movement, have always differed in terms of exactly âwhat they wantâ but the goals have always been the same: to overthrow the current governmental system to install what they feel is a âbetter wayâ. In no other time period except possibly right now was this feeling more rife than in the 1960s, a time when Lyndon Johnson had gleefully led our country headlong into Vietnam only to hand the baton off to one Richard M. Nixon who gainfully continued to attempt to âwinâ until the political embarrassment of Watergate had neutralized him and thus enabled his unelected Vice Presidential follow up Gerald Ford to woefully limp us out in both a defeated and demoralized state, in so doing creating an overall sense of radicalism that may or may not have been intended but most certainly was pervasive through a number of different political movements, the most romanticized of course being the hippie counterculture whose own (mostly pure and sincere) values would later be squashed and commercialized for the benefit of the same types of people who had started the conflict. Right in the heart of the era in 1968, The Rolling Stones set to work creating what many consider their signature song in none other than Sympathy For The Devil, a tune that was revolutionary in almost a vague, abstract context while directly dropping various references to past events that many would contend signaled that it was âtime for a changeâ. At the same time, legendary avant garde director Jean-Luc Godard was preparing a semi serious look at several sociopolitical movements at the time and having made an offer to The Stones themselves, he had the good luck of learning that they were fans of his films and had eagerly agreed to work with him (his first choice in The Beatles had laughingly turned him down). Godard would bring his film crew to The Stonesâ recording enclave of Olympic Studios in London where they were laying down the tracks for their legendary album Beggarâs Banquet and in particular when they were working on and recording the song of Sympathy itself, a momentous piece of rock history captured on film in such a way that fans get to witness the thrilling monotony of watching a band of this stature (arguably there are none who are higher) working together and figuring out different ways to bring the song together and make it work. However, Godard was still intending to blend the documentary studio footage of The Stones with a partly serious, partly satirical look at the different revolutionary movements of the late 1960s using what appears to be actors in order to give the viewer at least a taste of what the various mindsets consisted of, with only the distantly seen character of a mysterious girl who is spraypainting different messages of insurrection on various walls and vehicles being the one who appears consistently throughout the movie. Possibly the most outrageous (and offensive) faction shown is the Black Power militants (with no stated direct connection to either The Black Panthers nor The Nation Of Islam) who are shown to be living in a junkyard and keeping young white females as âprisoners of warâ while nearby one of their own rants on endlessly about his distaste for black women as opposed to his near reverent love for women who are white and later on we get a long, drawn out diatribe from their leader expressing his intentions for his so called revolution. Then we get an almost equally bizarre bit in a porno bookstore (with an underage child as one of the customers) where a white hipster type walks around loudly reading from Hitlerâs Mein Kampf all while encouraging other customers to give him the Nazi salute and then go over to his two crestfallen underlings and slap them both across the face (obviously some kind of a punishment for having screwed up elsewhere along the line) in a sequence which (judging from the way it was shot) appears to be equating Nazism and white supremacy with sexual depravity and brutality (although why Godard chose to include this particular movement in terms of relevancy remains a mystery). The best and most intriguing sequence features a film crew following a beautiful and seemingly innocent girl around in the woods all while asking her probing questions about politics (the girl claims to be pro democracy and talks as if she is sexually liberated) with the clearly stated, thought provoking conclusion being that if one were to literally become a so called intellectual revolutionary, they must first give up on being an intellectual in the first place, thus implying that any form of revolution requires little more than the pure, animalistic savagery in order to pull it off. Indeed, several little nuggets of truth are uncovered throughout these scattered vignette segments even as Godard pointlessly includes a narrator (said to be reading his bits from old paperback political novels) who constantly babbles over the onscreen action while making little to no sense himself. As for The Stones themselves, whenever we go back to them recording in the studio (theyâre never shown as ever being anywhere else), they ironically (and perhaps unintentionally) almost start to come off as being boorish, bourgeoisie musicians safely insulated from the turmoils of the outside world while they figure out the exact intricacies of how to do their little song so that they may pull it together and get it just right. Mick Jagger is shown early in the movie strumming on a guitar and explaining how the melody should go before spending the rest of the movie looking rather sullen and impatient between takes. Keith Richards is shown hijacking the bass guitar duties from Stones bassist Bill Wyman (who gets stuck shaking maracas for most of the time) before finally sliding down to the floor and sitting on his ass for the rest of the way. And drummer Charlie Watts spends almost the entire film struggling to find the proper cadence for the piece (as Jagger implores him to ânot be so deadâ) before he finally âgets itâ and drums away with a beatific look of accomplishment on his face. As for the late and lamented Brian Jones (arrested for marijuana during the shoot off camera), most of his key moments occur when the camera is focused on his back. The one major piece of trivia we learn is that early in the recording session the Kennedy reference was originally âI shouted out who killed Kennedy when after all it was you and meâ but after the assassination of RFK DURING that same session it wound up being changed to âWho killed The Kennedysâ and of course stayed that way. When it comes to the political aspects shown during the various vignettes, the real revelation here is that all of the rhetoric which we are subjected to is really just little more than pure nonsense, a bunch of big talk on what these guys would LIKE to do but would obviously never find a way in reality to pull it off which maybe can be seen as a shared quality of self importance that these radical type leaders all have and is gobbled up by their followers like hapless sheep (and the badly done narration over much of this only accentuates that point). Reportedly the filmâs producers cut about 10 minutes out of the film almost all of which consisted of the black militants continuing to rant and rave and that was probably a good thing even if Godard supposedly didnât agree. But in terms of being a mildly amusing and somewhat important rock documentary showing the conception and creation of a classic and iconic song of the genre, it works well enough but as far as being a thorough dissection of the heated political scene of the time in which the movie was made, it really comes down to the tolerance of each individual viewer who chooses to take it all inâŚ
5/10