#136: Velvet Goldmine
Part of the Top 150 Films series
It’s possible that, in different hands, Velvet Goldmine would have been nothing more than Charles Foster Kane/David Bowie slash-fiction. Thanks to Haynes’ superlative direction, however, the combination of Citizen Kane’s story structure with the flamboyance of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period reveals the hidden depths and crystalline voids of the characters (in both senses of the word) in the thick of the ’70s glam rock scene, as well as those looking in lustfully from a later distance. The film is spectacularly beautiful as regards every craft and design front: Maryse Alberti’s immaculate lighting shimmers and bounces effortlessly off Sandy Powell’s extravagant costumes onto Christopher Hobbs’ grandiose production design. But it’s the melancholy that pervades the characters and their performances — whether publicly on the grand stage, or privately to their romantic partners regarding their fluid sexualities — that elevates Velvet Goldmine from classic cinema and music pastiche onto multiple cultural pantheons.
