Video: Julian Schnabel and Lou Reed in Berlin
- story THE FADER
Released on DVD this week, Julian Schnabel’s Berlin is to concert films as Lou Reed is to aging frontmen. Filmed over five nights in December of 2006, Berlin documents the first time Reed’s maligned album of the same name was performed live in its entirely. While it suffers from the traditional pitfalls of concert films (ubiquitous close-ups of guitar necks, etc), Schnabel manages to add visual flash by cutting away to footage of actress Emmanuel Seigner (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and vintage Reed in his sinewy, sunglass-donning prime. But the film’s greatest moments come quietly, when the camera holds on Reed as he pushes up his eyeglasses and runs his fingers through wisps of thinning hair. Those are the moments that capture the ephemerality of rock stardom and the permanence of truly honest work—like the film and the album it’s dedicated to.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- story THE FADER
There is a part in the trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly where entirely paralyzed locked-in syndrome sufferer Jean-Domenique Bauby is wrapped up in blankets on a platform in the ocean, unfeeling anything because he is completely immobilized. Waves crash around him and he’s silent and unmoved and everything is very sweeping and emotional and we saw this about ten trillion times in the theater and each time it was more “triumphant!” and corny. But then our friend made us see it (even though we kind of wanted to see Starting Out in the Evening because we are old) and it was super crazy and not trite and triumphant without quotes or corniness. Julian Schnabel made an epic movie about a guy who can only blink. We can’t even blink epically. Watching an eyelid sewed up from the inside is the future of film. Go see it, if only for better use of Velvet Underground in a weirdo French movie than Michel Gondry could ever wish for.
