KWIF: Purple Rain (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film... or rather it's "Kent's Week in Film but from two weeks ago because one of the films he stopped halfway through watching and put off finishing the column until he finished watching that film rather than just posting about the two films he had seen"... but KWIFBFTWABOOTFHSHTWAPOFTCUHFWTFRTJPATTFHHS is kind of an unruly acronym.

This Week:
Purple Rain (1984, d. Albert Magnoli - dvd)
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024, d. Jeff Fowler - in theatre)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, d. Francis Ford Coppola - crave)

---

I can't say how many times I
have seen this poster but in
adding it to this post, it's the first
time I've ever noticed the woman
(Appolonia) in the background. That's
just how much Prince draws all the 
attention.

Prince was, without a doubt, a most distinct musician, a singular performer, and a one-of-a-kind persona on and off stage. He was an incredibly prolific songwriter, such that in the years since his passing there's still apparently thousands of recorded songs in his "vault" yet to be released (a lot of the delay in releasing said recordings is due to the legal turmoil over his estate). With such an astounding volume of output, even when just judging what was released when he was alive, it's no surprise that I love some of his songs, like some others, and the vast remainder I classify as "not for me". 

Prince was never my guy. He didn't have to be. Ever since I've been aware of pop music, Prince was there, to the point that I've never had to think much about him... he's just been a part of my audio diet my entire life. I never had to put a Prince album on, I would just get Prince in my life by being out in the world. But when I did put a Prince album on, to be honest, they didn't connect.  I guess I just didn't understand.

In finally watching Purple Rain, over 40 years after its release, I think I understand now. Music is Prince's art (duh), and like many artists, it seems like so much of it is specific to who he is.  His art is not created with others in mind, he is not motivated by being crowd pleasing, his art is just what came crawling (or spewing) out of him.

Purple Rain is a rarity in music biopics in that the artist was still in his ascendancy when the biopic was released, the artist plays himself in the film, and the artist managed to make the biopic about the success of new music created for the film, rather than any established hits. 

Prince and his band The Revolution came up in the Minneapolis music scene in the 1970's along with Morris Day and the Time, but the movie transposes the story to the early 1980's.  It's so '80's it hurts.  Having recently watched Streets of Fire, which came out the same year, both movies start out the same way, with vibrant neons screaming out of the shadows and pulsating pop hits blissfully inundating the audience's ears (on screen and off), but where Streets of Fire gets lost in its pseudo-reality that mashes up the 80's with the 50's, Purple Rain seems to be archiving the look and feel of the era. It's 80's and it hurts, but hurts so good.

Prince plays "The Kid" while Morris Day plays himself. They are rivals, competing for time and attention on the local music circuit. The Time's combination of boisterous rhythm-heavy soul mixed with Motown-style stagework is an obvious crowd-pleaser. The Revolution, playing The Kid's songs, are about challenging the audience, experimenting with sound, toying with expectations, and the audience runs hot and cold on them (I can relate).

Enter Appolonia, a beautiful wannabe pop singer from New Orleans who heard about the Minneapolis scene, and presumably a stand-in for Sheila E in Prince's true life story. She becomes the object of desire for both The Kid and Day, but we all know who's going to get her in the end. Day promises her the attention she craves from an audience, but she can't resist the wounded artistic soul of The Kid.

It should be noted that Prince, in playing The Kid, is...well...Prince circa 1984 all the way. The dramatically high hair, the one-of-a-kind exquisitely tailored outfits that bridge the gap between runway and superhero, and that bad-ass purple motorcycle that looks like it belongs on the streets of Gotham. The film's most absurd moment is seeing the kid run off stage while his band is still playing, stroll through the backstage corridors, burst out the back door, hop on his bitchin' ride, ride through the streets of Minneapolis (or L.A. posing as) to wind up parking in the driveway of in the most generic post-war bungalow. When you look like The Kid, you should have a freaking Batcave, or at the very least an all-brick-interior loft, not a room in your parent's basement.  

But this is the shattering of the pastiche of Prince that makes this fictionalized biopic so essential to understanding the man. The Kid enters his home to find his father, once again, beating on his mother. His father is a hulk of a man, at least compared to The Kid who barely scratches 5 feet tall and whose body weight doubles with all the gel in his hair. There's not much he can do to stop his dad, and that powerlessness is foundational.

Not only that but we learn that The Kid's father used to be a musician as well, bordering on big-time. His mother too, a singer on the scene...but it was their union that - instead of creating a force to be reckoned with - sunk them both into a toxic relationship of abuse and substance abuse, bearing a child who would grow up looking to escape them. But The Kid, with Appolonia, finds himself echoing his parent's dynamic, and catches himself, but not before it's too late.

Prince's best performances in the movie are when he's on stage (and seemingly half the movie is comprised of full-song stage performances, fully to the film's benefit) but he's still undeniably watchable and charismatic off that stage. Prince exposes his ugly side unabashedly, and he tells you exactly where that ugly side came from. It's not a point of pride, but also not something he wants to hide. The Kid, like Prince, is quiet and unassuming, but struts with confidence...except when he doesn't. The Kid never breaks outside of who we've ever seen Prince as, which is astonishing for a story that goes the places that it does. It's as if the image of Prince isn't an image at all, or else the Prince persona is so ingrained in him he can perform it with complete ease. Either way, it doesn't seem like acting.

Morris Day doesn't come off in the greatest light, here. He's like a high school bully, picking on the sensitive artist kid, and he's a nasty womanizer with a distasteful sense of humour. But, in playing himself, Day softens this with playing his whole schtick as camp. Like, he's not a punchline, but he and his entourage dial up their presence to the max, and then go over the top with a wink. At one point early in the film Day encounters a clingy ...ex-girlfriend? one-night-stand?... on the street and has her literally disposed of into a dumpster. It's disgustingly misogynist in context and riotously absurd in execution.

A sub-plot in the film finds The Kid's Revoloution bandmates Wendy and Lisa looking to have the band play a song they've written, and The Kid, certain only his genius matters, keeps denying them. But, in the film's climax, their song is the film's title track that not only bowls over the crowd but cements The Kid's status as the supreme performer in town (and wins back Appolonia)... except that Prince clearly wrote "Purple Rain" and the only track written by Wendy and Lisa on the soundtrack is "Computer Blue". I have to wonder if there was some other truth behind that fiction from Prince's backstory (especially considering Wendy and Lisa were rather new to The Revolution prior to the film's production).

I won't mince words, I loved Purple Rain. It's so shockingly unlike most musical biopics, the ones that try to span entire careers or focus on how the hits were generated. This is a slice of life movie, with a killer soundtrack, immensely energetic stage performances, and wholly understated drama. Never once is the intent of a scene spelled out, never once does the film give us the sense of pat resolutions, and never once does it stretch outside the immediate story its telling. It's not projecting in any way the future celebrity The Kid-aka-Prince is about to experience, it doesn't have record label executives in the audience of the climactic performance ready to sign him up to a million dollar record deal, it never even intones there's a world outside that Minneapolis music scene worth giving a damn about.

This is a very, very personal film to Prince and I came out of it impressed with the restraint, the honesty and the lack of ego it took to play someone who is both very egotistical but also very wounded inside, and to show the origins of that pain. And it makes so much sense that the songs within the film are sometimes there to express emotions The Kid cannot express except on stage, but it also makes sense that some of the songs are just outright crowd-pleasing hits. The soundtrack is ludicrously good.

I came out of viewing the film with a new sense of appreciation for Prince, for his artistry. His songs, even when they're not the refined pop hits, are still expressions of himself, his creativity, his sense of exploration and curiosity, his appreciation for music, both in where it's been and where he can take it. I don't necessarily like it all, but I do appreciate much better the man behind the art.

---

There are a LOT of posters
for Sonic 3, but 10 of them, like
this one, are fun parodies of
famous Xmas movie posters

I have never been a hardcore gamer, and I haven't played a video game that isn't a simple mobile time waster or digital board game adaptation in a very, very long time. I lost the drive to while away the hours on such things.  As such most video game-turned-movies hold zero interest for me, whether it's Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Prince of Persia, Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog.

I watched maybe half an hour of the first Sonic movie before getting distracted and never returning. It was fine but didn't captivate me in any way. A couple  of years later and I found myself at a screening of Sonic 3 because my teen asked me to go with them, and I've always said "I'll go see any movie" (although I still groaned and asked if we could go see Companion or Presence instead...alas).

In Sonic 3, Sonic has to learn how to be a team player with his new pals Knuckles and Tails, especially now that Shadow is on the loose.

Shadow was captured by a shadowy inter-governmental agency and run through experiments nearly 50 years earlier. The only thing that made it passable for Shadow was the friendship and companionship of the granddaughter of the lead scientist, Prof. Robotnik (double-senior to the usual Dr. Robotnik). When she is killed in an accident, Shadow is put on ice. Now that he is free, it's up to Sonic and team, partnering up with a depressed (and still alive) Dr. Robotnik to find Robotnik's grampa and save the day.  Except grampa  Robotnik is a nefarious guy with his own plans and things are bound to go haywire.

Sonic 3 is passably entertaining.  The effects are decent and there's some pop to some of the action sequences, though they're not pushing any boundaries here. I didn't really care about any of the characters coming into the movie nor did I develop any strong feelings for them coming out of the film. Ben Schwartz is kind of the perfect vocal tone for Sonic, playful and hyper and able to dip into pathos without getting too heavy...it's a really kid-friendly vocal performance for a kid-friendly movie. Jim Carrey does double duty as both Robotniks and, I have to say, is really going for it. Carrey always was a sort of human cartoon so being able to lean into that side of his schtick in dual roles seems so completely in his wheelhouse. The script (and I'm sure Carrey's plentiful ad-libs) don't totally abstain from pop-culture references but they're not the foundation of the humour here. Despite never being a big Carrey guy, I did find his performances here were *the* thing to glom onto. Keanu Reeves plays Shadow and...I never would have known if I weren't told. It's an effective performance for a brooding, sad character, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

This is straight-up middle-of-the-road family-friendly entertainment. It's not setting out to do much other than entertain some kids, their parents, and fans of the franchise for two hours, and it seems to do just that.

---

A few weeks back I crammed viewings of the three iterations of Nosferatu into two days. Nosferatu, in its original F.W. Murnow iteration, was a thinly concealed spin on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. For copyright reasons, it was intended for a German audience only, intent on skirting the attention of Stoker's estate. But it was too good, circulated too widely in Europe and the film did receive a lawsuit and most copies of the film were destroyed.

I've seen various iterations of Dracula in the past... I watched the Tod Browning version and its superior Mexican counterpart filmed in the same sitting in 2023, I watched many of the Hammer Horror versions in my early 20s and I saw Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (got a real "Ruth's Chris' Steakhouse" vibe to that name) when it came out. I'd be lying if I said any of them left a lasting impression.

Coppola's version, if it stoood out to me at all, was in part because of the Topps Comics adaptation, featuring four issues of glorious Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) illustrations. I was curious to watch a proper "Dracula" adaptation to see how it stood against Nosferatu. 

My mistake was thinking Coppola would do anything "proper" (see also the Toastypost on Megalopolis). His film opens with a prologue in the late 1400s with Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) going off to war, during which his beloved Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) hears of his demise and she drowns herself. Vlad returns home to find her dead and, in his rage, renounces God and all things holy, in the process becoming something demonically other.

A woefully miscast Keanu Reeves, sporting one of the all-time worst British accents committed to celluloid, plays Jonathan Harker, the young newlywed solicitor tasked with helping the noble count Dracula close his land deal as he plans his move from Transylvania to London.  Harker's arrival at the castle finds the young man is kept captive, unable to resist the demands of dramatically garbed and coiffeed Count. Dracula has spied a photograph of Harker's bride Mina (also Winona Ryder, somewhat miscast), who bears a striking resemblance to his Elizabeta, and he is stricken.  In his captivity, Harker seems to enter a semi-fugue state and, roaming the grounds, he encounters the Count's brides and things get...real horny, but blood horny, you know?

Dracula makes his preparations and the move to London, where he stalks and seduces Mina in the guise of an emo band frontman. Mina herself senses a connection to Dracula and despite her love for Jonathan can't seem to resist the Count. Her horny friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) has three suitors in Billy Campbell, Richard E. Grant and Carey Elwes, but runs into the night to fuck Dracula in his wolf form. She is bitten and falls ill, which spurs one of her suitors to bring in Professor Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) who diagnoses her as victim of a vampire attack.

The first 45 minutes of Coppola's film is pretty enthralling. The use of super-imposition, at the time, was a trite, olde-timey cinematic technique, and hasn't much been used since, but when characters are telling stories and the images sort of fade in and hover beside them providing the visuals, it is striking, particularly because he uses it often, but purposefully. Likewise, in an era where CGI is in its nacent form, Coppola turned instead to in-camera techniques for effects, often involving lighting and shadows. Especially early on, when Dracula is on screen, his shadow moves independent of him, and it's a wonderful effect.  

Coppola with this film was definitely using red as centrepiece, whether it's blood or clothing, everything else is kept in cool tones so that the reds pop. And boy do they pop, whether it's the guyser of blood that erupts from the cross when Dracula stabs it with his sword in the prologue, or the freaky blood-play the brides have with Jonathan, or Lucy's red nightgown as she goes fleeing lustfully into the night.

I want to say the wardrobes are anachronistic, but the costuming is really not of any discernible time. It's all bespoke to the film, from Dracula's ribbed armor (assuming it's meant to reflect musculature) in the prologue, to the draping robes that are both loose and clingy on the women of the film, to Dracula's London appearance with a finely tailored crushvelvet suit and stovepipe hat and armless glasses with blue lenses that is pretty sexy in its own right. Everything looks great.

Dracula works best when its central figure is a threatening commodity. The opening scenes, despite Reeves' godawful accent, are scintellating, as is the voyage of the Demeter transporting the Count to London. The film lulls briefly when it first falls into its romance sub-plot, as Dracula woos Mina, but it picks up as Van Helsing, Harker and Lucy's three suitors go vampire hunting while Mina tries to resist her past-life connection to the Count. Dracula here is a man long devoid of humanity finding desire and connection again with a woman who reminds him of what he lost. Unlike Count Orlok of Nosferatu, who cannot hide his ugliness, Dracula is a monster borne of romantic tragedy. Is there redemption for him? Of course not, but the film strangely captures him not as the ultimate villain but a somewhat sympathetic demon of desire.

It's pretty wild.