Absolute Beginners is
crammed with the bric-a-brac of the day.
Narrow lapels, cappuchinos,
Strand cigarettes - the trinkets have as
leading a role as the characters. The film
is based on Colin MacInnes's novel of the
same name and has as its hero Colin,
nineteen - with-a-Rolleiflex and out to
enjoy the last year of his teens. Colin
makes his money with his camera and is not particularly scrupulous about the photos he takes to do it. He is in love
Crepe Suzette and spends his long, hot summer wandering the streets and jazzdens of a vibrant if down at heel Soho.
It's a new and heady excitement that the film tries to capture. From the opening shot the camera makes giddy swoops through Soho's neon-drenched streets, music seeping from the alleyways. The pace and colour is non-stop all the way through to the closing race riots. Quite a spectacle but unfortunately a lot has been sacrificed to do it. For in the tumble of scenes very little is explained
There are a host of celebrity appearances — Tenpole Tudor's hilarious Ed the Ted, Ray Davis as Colin's Dad, David Bowie as marketeer Vendice though the film hinges on these cameos and rather
The critical error the great Lord Ichimonji commits is the division of his only recently unified domain between his sons. His regal disregard for the criticism of this course of action, proffered by the only son who truly loves and respects his father, seals his domain's fate, as well as his own destiny and that of those around
His position as absolute ruler trom accepting a more rational alternative to that of dividing his kingdom.
Scorning true loyalty and respect, he embraces the false praise that hides the corrupting ambition of his two eldest sons. Banishing his youngest son, Saburo, he undermines the possibility that his domain will be governed by a more just, rational, benign form of absolutist rule, under one enlightened ruler.
Civil war inevitably follows. Chaos ranges in the mind of Lord Ichimonji. He is driven mad through deteat, humiliation and betrayal. The torces of destruction and vengeance sweep on, personified in the Lady Kaede's desire to avenge her
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loses sight of our teenager. In the novel
Colin's carefree days are upset by the
brutality of the Notting Hill race riots, by
his horror at his triend Whizz turning out to be a tascist, the uncertainty of his
romance with Suze and, very importantly
by the death of his Dad. It's sad that this
last relationship, written in such caretully
measured prose as Colin tries to brush
over the tangle of his emotions, has
virtually been omitted from the film. For it ignores the thought that the heartache
and creeping responsibilities of these
events mark the end of Colin the teenager.
So what of the music? Colin loves jazz but despite arrangements by Gil Evans (whose name is usually preceded by the
word 'veteran like some old Bentley), there's actually very little of the stuff Nattily-dressed but routine songs from the Style Council, Sade and Bowie don't distract from this omission. Except for Jerry Dammers's 'Riot City', the best is
only snippets of Charles Mingus, Slim
Gaillard's short appearance and some Evans' horn pieces, while Smiley Culture does something dreadful to 'So What'.
Air-brushed colour and furious dance there may be but with such little explanation of the motives and emotions that shape the story the overall effect is contusion. Macinnes's novel's sharp insight is lost in the hubbub of 1986-style image. It deserves a more thoughtful film. family's humiliation at the hands of the Ichimonji's.
The battle scenes conjure up the essence of the 'blind forces of history unleashed by the great Lord Ichmonji's original sin. His transformation into a madman, lead around by a fool, the scheming and the dilemmas that absorb his friends and foes alike, really involve the audience in the whole experience of the film.
Hour-and-a-half into the film, Ichimonji has suffered every humiliation imaginable. Forced to rely on his fool and a blind man for company, he is a figure for whom we feel genuine sympathy and pity With the return of his youngest loyal son, a possible resolution TO the terrible conflicts opened up in Ichimonji's mind and kingdom presents itself. Saburo will save the great Lord through a combination of deft political negotiation with neighbouring warlords, and a demonstrative assertion of respect and loyalty to his father.
But fate has the final word yet to say. Kurosawa leaves us in no doubt that the fate of humanity, when it finds itself incapable of asserting rational thought 31
over misguided absolutism, is to blindly been 'taken over' by the message of King stumble towards the precipice. But is this Lear. Now it is one thing for Shakespeare a prediction of a fate Kurosawa believes to advocate a benign forn of rational to be born out of the human condition, absolutismi as the answer to English and therefore inevitable, or a call for a society's problems in the carly seven- rational intervention into the process of teenth century. But the transposition of And what of the nature of this rational another matter entirely. What was histor- intervention? Kurosawa in a recent inter-ically progressive in Shakespeare's day view as much as admitted that Ran had is entirely reactionary under the con- Disillusioned with Mao 2 Party member and one-time foreign during the Cultural Revolution unleashed
history to prevent such an outcome? VERONICA HELD I COULD NOT find out what Mao had for