Monday – Write piece for Plan B on ‘Quadrophenia’, newly issued on a Special Edition DVD. Such a frustrating film. The only real schizophrenia on display is certainly not evinced by the Phil Daniels character, who doesn’t have much to do except get annoyed and resemble a meerkat in eyeliner.
No, it’s the film itself that has the titular split personalities – and not intentionally. It tries to portray the 60s Mod scene in a gritty, naturalistic manner, which are the bits which work. But it also suffers from its original brief: to adapt the Who’s slightly silly 70s concept album of the same name, and include its very 70s music. The Who in 1979 are a very different group to the Who of 1964, and bringing these split personalities together just doesn’t work. They should have let the 60s music do all the talking, and kept the prog-rock ‘Hooked On Bach’ synths out of it. Though the brass-section stormer ‘5.15’ is allowable. I’ll let that one through as an exception to the rule.
Leslie Ash’s Karen Carpenter hair is as wrong as the casting of Sting. Toyah Willcox’s boyish blond feathercut is more accurate for the period, but her character is curiously shortchanged. She has some kind of casual romantic bond with Phil Daniels’s Jimmy, but it’s not really explained. It doesn’t help that a lot of the movie is improvised, and the different actors – all still in their teens and needing to learn that improvisation is a team effort, not an audition – are desperately pulling at each scene’s corners. It’s often a schizoid mess, frankly.
Toyah’s character is called “Monkey”, which I used to think was a rather silly name for a girl until I saw the cover of last week’s Time Out Magazine. They’re showcasing people from their personal ads section with full photos, in a vaguely Reality TV manner. One is a short-haired woman who describes herself as “Munkee, 26”. I wonder if she’s a Quadrophenia fan.
Phil Daniels shouting “BELL BOYYYYYY!” rather recalls William Shatner’s similarly hammy outburst in “The Wrath of Kahn”: “KAHHHHNNNN!” I know it’s hard to be an angsty teenager and NOT laughable to others, but the thing is Mr Daniels does manage to be angry and serious in much of the film up to this moment. So it’s so disappointing that this moment comes late in the movie, when we should be feeling Jimmy’s alienation, not thinking he’s a risible Cockney meerkat in a nice suit.
Modern Mods from all over the world come to Brighton and London to do ‘Quadrophenia’ tours, which is great, but the film is frequently undeserving of such affection. A new Mod landmark movie needs to be made. One without Sting – who in Quadrophenia is clearly a New Romantic faking it in the Mod World. I know, we can smell our own.
