Brian Slade: Man is least himself when he talks in his own person... Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth.

Galina_movie_fan

The year is 1984 and it's been 10 years since glam-rock superstar Brian Slade (Meyers) faked his own death and vanished from the spotlight. Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale), an investigative reporter, interviews the friends and business associates of the ex-pop icon trying to find out what lays behind the glitter make-up, flamboyance, outrage, and the intoxicating freedom of the sexual revolution. While uncovering the truth about disappearing star, Arthur will come to terms with his own past.

This movie is brilliant, wild (e), beautiful, exotic, as the rock movement it depicts and in its best moments (which are plenty) it has achieved the result that the praised to the high heaven "Moulin Rouge!" could only dream about. VG is lurid, is dreamlike, is surreal and it recreates perfectly the decadent world of 1970 Glam Rock with its androgynous male rock stars who looked like the strange and exotic flowers of faraway worlds, with its nostalgia and obsession, glitter and psychedelic colors, the world where Oscar Wilde whose name has been mentioned more than once would've felt at home.

The film's visual palette is incredible, the costumes are jaw-dropping, the music and singing simply mesmerize. Ewan McGregor's acting and courage (Curt Wild, the punk-rock pioneer who looked in the movie very much like another Curt) was among the most memorable along with a relative newcomer Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Brian Slade and incredible Toni Collette as Brian's American wife Mandy. While certainly not everyone's cup of tea due to many scenes with homosexuality, drugs, and full frontal nudity, the movie deserves to be seen for the successful recreation of the world of glam and glitter rock, "elegant crowds… amid sumptuous ornamentation".

score 8/10

Galina_movie_fan 10 April 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1634910/