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If you can remember the 60's then you weren't there, is a regularly quoted statement apparently made by Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. In some respects, the era that Eden is set in could well see a similar attitude being taken. However, I can remember much of the 90's and 00's when sweaty underground basements, seedy squatted warehouses, hidden tree lined copses and loads of other weird and wonderful places served as venues for the underground house music scene that I was an active participant in, both as punter, dancer, dj, and crew.
Covering a period of some 15 years, during which our hero Paul remains remarkably ageless, Eden explores a world where French house music was really coming into it's own. The filtered disco beats were certainly prominent in our record boxes and the inexorable rise of Daft Punk was something that I think, with hindsight, we should have all seen coming. However, just like Paul and Stan and Arnaud and the rest, we never really noticed them for a lot of the time, caught up as we were in our own loves and losses and general craziness.
This is certainly a very French movie by anyone's description, moving along at it's own pace, lots of space and moodiness and an ambiance that I found quite deceptive looking back. Initially, events and characters are revealed and unfold in rather a random and slightly disconcerting manner. However, as certain constants start to repeat, we start to make more sense of the world we're immersed in, something which I felt was a deliberate attempt to mimic or mirror how our band of brothers and sisters are forming and norming as they say.
The music and the soundtrack are to die for, utterly spot on and a joy for the ears if you're in a movie house with a decent sound system. We see the dancers enjoying the sounds but strangely, we're mainly apart from them – as everyone knows, DJ's don't dance (often because they can't ironically). Again, I felt this separation was quite deliberate, because that's how a DJ views his audience to some extent, a mass of (hopefully) sweaty gyrating humanity coming together in response to their selection of vinyl. The self-absorption is also true, the inability often to understand others and to be focused intensely on one's self, perhaps from spending so much time listening to repetitive beats again and again and again.....to fade...
The boys are doing well and travel to the US, which causes it 's own stresses but back home, a tragic event happens that really hits like an emotional hammer blow. This is where I thought things got very interesting, as the period of self-reflection, in the context of a long movie, is short, and although there are repercussions, things are soon, it would seem, back largely to how they were. Except of course, they're not and the inevitable slide towards entropy and unhappiness becomes ever more inevitable. The repeated behaviours again show a lack of willingness to grow and develop, preferring the safety and security of the known ecstatic world, despite the obvious signs of decay within, especially compared to the changing external environment.
There's no big bang, there's no final rush, how could there be? Realising your dreams have largely been an illusion isn't going to be a spectacular experience for anyone.
score 9/10
paultreloar75 28 July 2015
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3286175/ |
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17-3-2021 02:46:05