ART WILL SAVE THE WORLD : A FILM ABOUT LUKE HAINES AT THE BASEMENT BRIGHTON 24/11/2012

To celebrate our 2 years together, my girlfriend and I had decided to spend the weekend of the 24th and the 25th of November in Brighton. Being my usual "canny" self I managed to fit something musical into the proceedings by taking her to see the recently released documentary "Art will save the world" about former The Auteurs frontman Luke Haines.It was showing at a small Art Cinema called The Basement and was due to be followed by a Q and A session with Mr Haines and film director Niall Mccan.

 

 

 The documentary is quite short clocking at 1 hour and 15 minutes (could have been stretched a bit more without becoming boring) and avoids the usal rock documentary format. Apart from the appearance of the first drummer in The Auteurs in a surreal sequence where he is brushing leaves off the ground behind Haines on a stage, there is no interview of anyone who played music with Haines (not very surprising considering The Auteurs were composed of hired-hands and of Haines's former partner Alice but a bit weird when it comes to former BBR associates Sarah Nixey and John Moore). Not a lot of famous talking heads, apart from Jarvis Cocker (who makes a really great contribution to the movie), we get two writers (John Niven and David peace, respectively authors of "Kill your friends" and "The Damned Utd", Lukes former manager, his former clip director and a guy who wrote a book about him).

 

Niall Mccan depicts Haines as a man of strong principles that doesn't compromise his artistic vision to pursue commercial success ("I don't write for the man on the street" says Haines in the movie). The film is a bit pretentious sometimes but very funny (a little bit like Haines in fact). I didn't quite get the sequences of people auditionning to be Haines but the bits where Haines revisits his hometown of Walton-on-thames are hilarious (deadpanning at its best). Sometimes for plot purposes, the facts gets twisted a bit,"Bad Vibes" is presented as a kind of "career saving moment". Maybe the book sold well but I don't think it garnered Haines more record or ticket sales. He says that in 2005 he was playing to audiences of 50 people. Well I saw him at the Deaf Institute in 2009 (after Bad Vibes had been released) and there was about 50 people in the place... Shame some subjects weren't treated in a more thorough way (Das Capital, the pop strike, Black Box Recorder).There is also nothing about "Property", the cancelled musical that Haines was writing inbetween the end of Black Box Recorder and the recording of the "Off my rocker at the art school bop" album. I would have been nice to get Dave Boyd former head of Hut Records to reminisce about working with Haines. But choices had to be made and long rockumentaries are not good usually (major example : George Harrison : Living in the material). Haines appearing after the screening with the director proves that he must be pleased with the version of himself that's presented in the movie, which would mean it's probably not for the man on the street ;).

 

Link to preview : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3H61oDvflc