You learn something every day. One day, you know nothing about a Canadian heavy metal band named Anvil, and suddenly you learn that they’ve recorded twelve albums (and are working on numbers 13 and 14) and were considered to be a contemporary of metal legends like Metallica, Anthrax and Motorhead. You might not have known that Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses was a teenage fan and that, once in their youth, they met with head-banging reverence by festival crowds.
And, surprisingly, you learn that a documentary about a past-their-prime Canadian heavy metal hair band on a long, long losing streak can be an enlightening rumination on what it means to have a dream, and to keep it alive long enough that it might come true.
I’ll admit to once having a few Kiss and Judas Priest LPs in my collection. I may have turned the radio up to blast “Back In Black” while alone in the car. But I’m no metal fan. When I began to watch Sasha Gervasi’s excellent documentary, I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a “This Is Spinal Tap” tribute. Early scenes capture Steve “Lips” Kudlow working his depressing catering job and the band embarking on an ill-fated European tour. There are so many Spinal Tap moments here: devoted fans “Cut Loose” and “Mad Dog” (who pounds a beer through his nose), a lead guitarist who plays with a vibrator, and the local television show reveling in Anvil’s dirty rock lyrics. Their song “Metal On Metal” even sounds like Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom.” When band co-founder and drummer Robb Reiner was introduced, I was sure it had to be an homage to the director of the greatest-ever rock mockumentary.
But then something really unexpected happens: Anvil as a heavy-metal joke disappears, and the guys become very genuine people who you wish would find success and fulfillment in their music. Watching Kudlow record an enthusiastic radio-station promo and being told that, oops, we forgot to turn on the tape, you’ll be amazed that he doesn’t stop smiling. Even during the difficult behind-the-scenes moments when he childishly argues with Reiner, with whom he has rocked since a teenager, you can see the nice guy beneath the black t-shirt.
So the European tour is a failure, and the band returns to Ontario to get back to their lives. But they’ve recorded some demos and Kudlow sends a copy off to the producer of their early albums. He refuses to let his dreams die, even as he celebrates his 50th birthday, and despite a music scene that has changed dramatically since the band formed.
The core of Anvil! is definitely the bond between Kudlow and Reiner, who seem to consider each other as a brother, although they continue to butt heads. Kudlow is the overgrown kid who believes in the possibilities of rock and roll, and Reiner supplies the steady propulsion and balance expected of a drummer. Both have families that wearily support them — Reiner’s sister is the one downer — and enough hope shines through to keep them pursuing fame. Eventually, the producer calls back and the band faces difficult decisions that test their commitment. I’ll leave it at that.
This should be required watching for anyone in a band, for anyone who wants to be a musician — not necessarily as a lesson in how to become a success or avoid becoming a failure. The film is really a testament to the tenacity of dreams. Reiner expresses frustration that success hasn’t found Anvil, and seems well aware that their last chance has to happen pretty soon. It seems like only death will stop Kudlow — they will have to pry the Flying V from his cold, dead hands.
There’s more talk about life and aspiration in this film than a thousand afterschool specials. Kudlow’s successful, professional siblings are incredibly supportive. A scene where his older sister states her support for his dreams (and yet fights back tears and a troubled brow) is nicely concluded with his observation that “family is important shit, man.” Lasting fame may not find the band, but I’d say these guys are successful for having the support for their unlikely rockin’ dreams.
2009. Directed by Louis Psihoyos.
I put off watching The Cove because I knew what I was going to see. Sometimes you need movies to escape the depressing aspects of life, rather than focus on them. But witnessing what happens in this brave documentary is important.
The debut of this film was the first I’d heard about the dolphin capture and slaughter in a hidden cove near Taiji, along the coast of Japan. From September to March of every year, dolphins are detoured from their migratory route, chased by boats with men aboard banging on pipes, and herded into shallow waters to be speared and left to bleed out. Some are captured for export to entertainment parks. The local fishermen are extremely aggressive in keeping activists away and, for a long time, were very successful at it.
As much as I dreaded watching it, The Cove was rewarding to watch due to the way the situation is filmed. First, the man who has led the opposition in Taiji is Richard O’Barry, who began as a trainer on the 1960s television show, Flipper. O’Barry is motivated by the wealth brought to him by the show and the subsequent popularity of captured dolphins for performance in venues around the world. After years of exploiting the animals, he regretted what he’d done and began working to free captured dolphins and end the Japanese slaughter.
O’Barry describes the dolphin’s smile, loved by millions of visitors to Sea World and venues like it, as a cruel joke of nature. The animals are highly intelligent, capable of communication and gentle when encountering humans in the wild. When confined and isolated, they suffer depression and anxiety. Those same people who love them performing in a water park wouldn’t want them captured and confined if they knew how the experience destroyed the dolphins.
Second, the film includes a high-tech adventure story, as director Louis Psihoyos assembles an “Ocean’s Eleven” team to elude the local police, infiltrate the cove and plant audio and video equipment that will document what happens out of sight. Thermal cameras, night dives and reconnaissance missions add some suspense to the substance of the film, which also tackles fish stock depletion, international whaling debates and the mercury poisoning that results from the overfishing.
The most telling aspect of The Cove is the acknowledgment by the fishermen that if the world found out what was happening at Taiji, the killing of 33,000 dolphins each year there would end. The few who benefit continue to hide behind claims of tradition, but most Japanese didn’t know it was taking place and don’t support it. Many don’t realize that inferior dolphin meat was being passed off as more expensive and scarcer whale meat. When the fishermen tried to give dolphin meat to a school lunch program, despite its heavy mercury content, two Taiji city councilmen stepped up to oppose it, endangering their own lives and livelihood.
The footage and sound recordings captured by the activist team is presented without comment, but there really is no need for any. But it’s clear why none of the Japanese involved wanted their faces and actions caught on film. The question that remains is, if they are so ashamed of what they are doing, why are they still doing it?
2009. Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick. Directed by Jason Reitman.
The irony is thick in Up In The Air. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a happy air warrior who specializes in firing employees for timid employers all over the country. He is summoned back to HQ for a change in direction — a young colleague (Anna Kendrick) has devised a means of firing people through videoconferencing, effectively terminating Bingham from the profession he has perfected.
Bingham sees the benefit of a face-to-face dismissal for every kind of unwanted employee, a way to soften the blow and minimize the blowback, however insincerely delivered. “Everyone who has ever ruled an empire or changed the world sat in the same seat as you, and they would not have accomplished what they did if this hadn’t also happened to them” — that’s his line, polished and appropriated by all his colleagues, meant to disarm and distract the newly axed. “What we do is take people at their most fragile,” he later admits to the colleague, “and set them adrift.”
The new method of firing employees online will take away his constant travel and disrupt the life he has also perfected — living without roots, collecting perks from every transaction, slipping away effortlessly from every interaction. He travels light, using his executive status to dash to the front of lines, maxing out his per diems, and eventually meeting his complement in the form of Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel bar. They flirt over preferred membership cards, and have a nice, commitment-free romp before catching their morning flights.
Bingham takes his young colleague on the road with him, to show her the complexities of their trade that can’t be summarized in a dispassionate script. She’s wound as tight as he is loose, but as she unwinds on the road, we learn that she’s vulnerable to the painful toll of relationships that he has built his life around avoiding. He’s even written the book on unburdening yourself of human baggage — a self-help book he travels to promote on his days off.
Eventually, his protege inspires him to examine all the miles he’s traveled and to question where he’s going. “Call me when you’re lonely,” Alex says as they part once again at an airport gate. “I’m lonely,” he replies in an untypical, unguarded moment.
Up In The Air is a terrifically entertaining film, and prescient enough to be released in the middle of our great recession, when downsizing and career-shifting and existential doubt are familiar to many of us. Unburdened by the weight of others holding him down, Clooney’s friendly executioner floats from town to town, helping dismantle the American dream for one middle-class worker at a time. He suggests to one that now might be the time to chase those dreams he’d left behind, that the end he’d been hired to deliver was really a beginning of sorts. Some of those receiving bad news are angry and resentful, and some are ashamed. Most will find a way to land on their feet. But it doesn’t matter to the messenger, because he’ll be long gone before they land anywhere.
Bingham’s approach to his career seems like it should be successful. Without the weights of conscience, commitment and purpose, a guy could really get somewhere. What he finds up above us all, up above the clouds that hover over the rest of us, is that a life without them can be lonely and cold.