Sunday 8 July 2018

Vinyl (1965)


 
Vinyl
1964 is now officially over for me and my movie calendar says 1965. It is also about a week until I am moving back to Denmark with my family. Busy days!

First movie of 1965 is Andy Warhol’s “Vinyl”.

If you are into sadomasochistic gay sex this is likely something for you. Sadly, sadomasochistic gay sex is not my thing and that leaves… very little.

“Vinyl” is supposed to be a pre-Kubrick take on “A Clockwork Orange”, but you could have fooled me. I did not perceive any story at all. What we do get is a one-hour movie consisting of two camera positions. The first, lasting about 80% of the movie has a sadomasochistic séance in the background (not so much sex though, they a mostly just torturing the poor fellow) while in the foreground a dude called JD is first making an obscure speech, then is being the subject of another sadomasochistic séance led by a dude called The Doctor. Again not so much sex, mostly torture, humiliation and sexual undertones. All the while a girl is sitting on the right side of the picture doing… nothing. To call her an observer is too gracious. She is just there, looking as if she is wondering why she is there at all.

There is dialogue, but it is a declamatory dialogue that makes little sense and I tuned it out completely. I do not remember a single line.

At some point the camera zoom in on JD, but nothing else changes.

There is music and it is actually good music. The only redeeming feature of the movie, but exactly what the role of this music is I do not know. It is just there.

In art exhibitions Warhol is a big name and his paintings and installations are both interesting and influential, but if “Vinyl” is typical for his movie production then I would say that they miss the mark. I could do without.

Thankfully there are no free-flying dicks in “Vinyl”, but that seems merely a coincidence. Otherwise this movie follows pretty well the path setup by the List editors for underground gay movies. I get that there must be something for the LGBT community and that Warhol is a pretty big name, but for crying out loud, there must be something better than this.



 

8 comments:

  1. The main thing I love about Vinyl is Edie Sedgwick. I've watched the whole thing a couple of times and I mostly just watch Edie. I find her subtly hilarious.

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    1. Sadly there was nothing for me to love in this movie. I found the entire experience depressing

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  2. I have gone on record as saying that this is the worst movie I have ever seen. I stand by that.

    On Letterboxd, I have reserved the 1/2-star review level solely for this movie.

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    1. There are contenders for that honour. I remember a few movies on the list I would happily nominate, but, yeah, this was an utter waste of time.

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  3. One less movie to watch for 1965. Good luck with the move!

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    1. Thank you. Seriously, you are not missing anything.

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  4. There are Andy Warhol movies worth seeing (Andy Warhol's Dracula) but this one isn't it. I'm not sure I would have picked up on The Clockwork Orange connection unless I knew about it beforehand.

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    1. I should hope so, because it does not get much worse than Vinyl.
      I actually tend to like Warhol paintings and installation and I expected to like this movie a lot more than I did. I just wonder why the editors picked this one rather than some of his better works.

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