Absolute Beginners (1986)
(On Cable TV, August 2022) There was a point, maybe halfway through Absolute Beginner, where I couldn’t believe I had never heard about the film before—after all, it felt like a missing link in the history of musicals, a bold mid-1980s British take on the form that was as unafraid to lean into the strengths of the genre as the MGM classics did. Socially conscious in discussing racism in late-1950s London, it also features none other than David Bowie in a devilishly seductive villainous role. There’s a dynamic quality to some of the film’s visual inventiveness, and some of the sequences are frankly anthology-worthy. What becomes more obvious in the second half, however, is how uneven the result can be. The tone and results are more scattered than one would wish for, and Absolute Beginner as a whole suffers from the difference between its peaks and valleys. Some subplots don’t really go anywhere, and the ending falls flat. The film’s production history suggests that there was a constant tug-of-war about the film’s execution and that explains a lot. Still, there are some undeniable high points here, whether it’s director Julien Temple’s ability to render the poppy atmosphere of the dawn of the rock-and-roll age, or some of the musical numbers—watch a clip of “That’s Motivation” for an idea of how genius some of the film’s moments can be. So, while Absolute Beginners is good and a minor reference in musical history (in an otherwise disappointing decade), it really missed what it could have been with more care, rewrites and ambitious artistic intentions.
