a review of 毛发

Seeing it again, what stood out? The sideburns. That's what stood out to me. what a weird personal grooming choice. (who am I kidding, that was probably a record company committee decision) At least initially, the Monkees's show was a cynical attempt to capitalize on and create a more commercial, more "safe" version of the Beatles. You get the sense that the original pitch for this movie was just to make something along the lines of "Help!" or "A Hard Days' Night" or maybe one of the many nearly indistinguishable Elvis movies, but somewhere along the way, it got very weird. The film makes repeated hints at some sort of overall narrative that never actually shows up. There's color shifting, photonegative shots (Monkees in the Upside Down) and a lot of what's on this image here, band members falling through open space. There's a certain amount of rock star sex idol self-indulgence here too and it's difficult to say whether it's all self-aware. There's some clever lyrics along the way too, but unlike the guy who intro'd the film last night at the HFA, I'm not going to spoil that.