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Mozart's descendants, it is said in Weekend, The Rolling Stones rehearsing in a London studio while upheavals simmer in the streets. Orange, yellow, green panels comprise the recording laboratory, guitar fuzz and feedback reign. The titular tune, by fits and starts. "If we can get a groove happening, we'll probably be alright." Outside is another world, Black Power radicals leaning out of junkyard cars and struggling to make themselves heard over Thames foghorns and whooshing airplanes, the shouted texts are by Eldridge Cleaver and Amiri Baraka. ("Love, patience, brotherhood and unity" are exalted while white cuties are mauled on the way to a fusillade.) Eve Democracy (Anne Wiazemsky) in the woods, interviewed by a pesky TV crew: "Do you think drugs are a spiritual form of gambling? ... is it because the myth of culture is so well-accredited that it always survives revolution? ... Is an orgasm the only time you can't cheat life?" Mein Kampf recited by a purple-suited Iain Quarrier in a bookstore, where wares are purchased with fascist salutes and hippie slaps. (The slow pan across the shelf of stroke mags soon recurs in Allen's Bananas.) Add it together, says Jean-Luc Godard, a matter of one plus one. Art and politics, works in progress surveyed along curving tracks. The back of Brian Jones' shaggy head swaying with headphones, Mick Jagger meeting the camera's gaze with an insouciant "Ça va?," the gradual layering of a rock anthem into Mephistophelian pantheism. Punning graffiti for an overcast cityscape, "Sovietcong" and "Cinemarxism" and "Freudemocracy." The blood-splattered Muse at the close, cf. The Red Shoes, the sacrificial lamb hoisted on a craning altar. "You must understand this is the level of resistance." The nightmare of Gimme Shelter follows shortly. With Frankie Dymon Jr., Françoise Pascal, and Glenna Forster-Jones.
--- Fernando F. Croce |