Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Purple Rain (1984, R)



Welcome to today’s extra-long post.  The review will be coming, I promise, but bear with me while I get some Prince ramblings out of the way first.  For me, Prince’s death was a lot like David Bowie’s.  I’ve never been a “fan” on his – not because I don’t like him, but just because I’ve never really sought him out.  I was more aware of him as a cultural icon than anything else.  I knew that he was weird and wonderful, I knew about the love symbol, and I knew that he was a Minnesota boy, which I loved.  Truth be told, my familiarity with Prince was even thinner than my familiarity with Bowie.  At least with Bowie, I knew a handful of his more famous songs, and I knew his voice well enough that I could probably recognize him on songs I didn’t know.  But I can honestly say that the only song I knew that Prince wrote was “Purple Rain,” and 1) that’s only because I’d heard of this movie and 2) unless I heard the title in the chorus, I wouldn’t have known that’s what it was.  We’re talking very little Prince exposure, people.

But it still hit me hard to hear that he’d passed.  Like Bowie, he seemed like the sort of person who wasn’t really meant to die, a strange, ethereal creature who would just glide off to the stars when his time came (granted, Bowie hit the “alien” button a lot harder than Prince ever did, but it’s still much the same idea.)  And so, I smiled sadly when I heard about the 35-W bridge in Minneapolis being lit purple all weekend, and I read tributes and remembrances online, and I found videos to give me a better picture of this icon beyond the ruffles and heels.  This last point is the important one, because if you loved Prince, you won’t be surprised to learn that what I heard blew me the hell away. 

One of the first clips I found was his Superbowl halftime show from 2007, where he brought the house down in pouring rain.  As I looked for more, I heard about SNL’s “Goodnight, Sweet Prince” special, so I watched that on Saturday night.  I’d remembered the old “Prince Show” sketches with Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph (it occurs to me now that these are probably where most of my original Prince education came from,) and the performance clips cemented a few things that I’d already strongly begun to suspect from my YouTube browsings.  First, Prince could put on a show.  SNL musical guests can be hit-or-miss for me, even if I’m a fan of the band in question, and it feels like many have a show-up-play-go-home vibe.  But each Prince appearance was a full-out performance, delivering excellent music, stunning visuals, and infectious energy.  Second, I’m pretty sure the name of the game with Prince was “versatile.”  Everything about him – from his writing style, to his singing voice, to his multi-instrument talents, to his signature fashions – was so varied and wide-reaching.  (Also, his guitar solos are so badass.  I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, and there’s no other word I can use to describe them.  Such displays of his immense talent, blended with such amazing musicality.)  By the time the special got to the clip of his impromptu performance at the after party for SNL’s 40th anniversary and I watched the celebrities in formal wear filming Prince on their phones because they were so blame excited, I was full-on grinning behind watery eyes.

This is around the time that I heard my local cinema was doing special showings of Purple Rain.  By this point, I’d pretty much decided that, if I wasn’t currently a Prince fan, I really needed to be, so I ordered my ticket and saw the movie on Sunday night.  Again, my only prior knowledge of the film was that it was a movie starring Prince with lots of popular music, which he wrote.

Plot first.  The Kid is an aspiring musician working at the Minneapolis club First Avenue.  He has an arresting androgynous style, colossal talent, and, per the club’s owner, a difficult time keeping butts in seats.  A rival musician, the smug, slimy Morris, wants to supplant the Kid by producing a new girl group, and the club owner has warned the Kid that he’s out if Morris’s group takes off.  Meanwhile, the Kid has an instant connection with Apollonia, a young singer and dancer who’s new in town and dreams of making it big.  However, for these two, music, stardom, and love are all battling for their affections, and it isn’t clear which will win out for either of them.

We’ll get the obvious critques out of the way first.  Virtually all the acting is patently ridiculous, much of the dialogue is ludicrous, and the story is nothing to write home about.  The movie deals with some heavy subject matter that’s handled with all the subtlety of high melodrama crossed with an afterschool special.  But none of that is the point.

The point is, of course, the music.  By the time I saw the movie, my Prince searching had led to a couple of the most famous numbers – namely “Let’s Go Crazy” (which I now love a lot) and “Purple Rain,” both of which were even cooler in the context of the movie.  Most of the others were completely new to me, although I’d heard many of their names in online chatter about favorite Prince songs/memories.  Throughout the movie, whenever I’d get to a chorus and heard a recognizable title line, I’d think, “Oh, so that’s ‘The Beautiful Ones’/‘When Doves Cry’/‘I Would Die 4 U’!” each seemingly catchier and better performed than the last.  Because, major “duh” moment, Prince is fantastic here, as a singer, instrumentalist (mainly amazing guitar, but some nice piano, too,) and electrifying stage performer.  He’s so infinitely watchable that any gripes about the acting or the script don’t matter. 

I also like how thoroughly the movie drives home the point that he’s fabulously androgynous, stunningly odd, and perfectly sexy, all at once.  It’s interesting to see the way he took looks that were allegedly the complete opposite of male sexual appeal and proved, in essence, that the haters don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  His dressing and visual performance are very much about inviting the female gaze, and it’s no surprise when Apollonia’s finds its way to him.  (On this subject, probably the most genuinely intriguing moment in the script, for me, is when the Kid runs off with Apollonia and Morris, perceiving the Kid as having “stolen his girl,” shouts after him that he’s a faggot.  Even though he’s just run off with Apollonia.  Who’s he’s obviously into.  Who’s obviously into him.  And Morris obviously feels threatened by him.  Having a little trouble reconciling gender expression with sexual orientation, are we?)

RIP, Prince, an incredibly original and versatile talent who left us too soon.  I wish I’d known just how wonderful he was years ago, but I have a lot of catching up and a lot of unquestionably great music to look forward to.

Warnings

Sexual content, language, drinking, violence (including spousal abuse,) and thematic elements.

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