Quadrophenia.
One of my favourite films of all time, it was on ITV last night but I missed out because my head feels like cake at the moment, as it did last night, - another reason why blogging has been scarce at the moment.
We follow the life of Jimmy the Mod (who is brilliantly played by Phil Daniels), a teenager that feels a lot angst towards the 'normal' life in which his parents and other 'adults' have followed, which is why he became a mod "I don't wanna be the same as everybody else. That's why I'm a Mod, see? I mean, you gotta be somebody, ain't ya? or you might as well jump in the sea and drown." We watch Jimmy fall in love with the beautiful Steph (played by Leslie Ash), they go to Brighton together, have it off in someone's back garden and then Jimmy gets arrested (not for having it off in someone's back garden). But through their relationship we see Jimmy trying to impress her by acting very..... what's the word?
Let's just say Keith Moon - like, which is seen mostly when at a club where he threatens to jump from the balcony. The reason I use Keith Moon-like is because of the idea of the album, which is that Pete Townshend created the character using all of the personalities of the Who members - which is why Jimmy has a form of Schizophrenia, he goes from this absolute lad to being extremely pissed off with everyone and everything, he has reason too when Steph ends up with his best mate after he's been stuck in jail with Ace Face (Sting, his new best pal and hero that he met in Brighton, he has a lot of mirrors on his scooter). We see the demise of Jimmy through this period as he has a barmy with Steph, quits his job, get's ran over by a bus and his scooter breaks as a result then he decides to go to Brighton - the place that brought him immense happiness.
Jimmy finds Ace Face's scooter outside of a hotel and out the door comes Ace dressed in his bell boy uniform running around after the exact people who Jimmy was against, and who he thought Ace was against too - in fact the kind of people that mods are against. So Jimmy does the reasonable thing of stealing his scooter and riding it on Brighton cliffs before letting it drive off the cliff. Now whenever I've watched this with friends they get confused as to why the scooter gets thrown off the cliff and I see it that the scooter is getting thrown off the cliff because it shows Jimmy's disgust and outrage that mods appear to be the same as everyone else (being that the scooter is the mod symbol), it symbolising Jimmy's teenage years/mod years dying, coming to a crash and burn.
I love the story line, I think it's great and shows a time in everyone's life where we just don't know what to do, everything is going wrong and the life we once lived is wasn't what you thought it was. It's like getting into your own head and you leave the film with a better understanding of yourself. The film is, of course, based on the Who album; Quadrophenia, and I think this film has done a far better job than what the film version of Tommy did for Tommy (the album). I love this film and it's one of those 'films to watch before you die' sort of films. I think Phil Daniels did a brilliant job of portraying our lovable lad Jimmy, Phil makes the best Jimmy we could have had, that the film could have had.
I'd speak more into the music of it but it's all the Who. really, apart from the odd time when the Ronnettes are getting played and other mod bands and musicians make their way into the picture. The film does the album justice, the director (Franc Roddam) has done such a wonderful job of getting the stories seen through the music and patching them all up onto a film and making a really great film that is still getting watched on TV 32 years later.
No comments:
Post a Comment