The Velvet Underground

Of Haynes' three music films to date, this is the most straightforward: the documentary produced by the streaming service Apple TV Plus about the rise and fall of the style-defining, experimental rock band The Velvet Underground. Founded in 1964 in New York City; basic line-up: Lou Reed, John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Sterling Morrison, Doug Yule, supplemented on their debut album by the dark voice of Nico, the blonde model from Germany; an essential component of Andy Warhol's legendary Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show; quasi-inventory of the Factory in a productivity frenzy; an integral part of the underground, counterculture, avant-garde: drag and queerness as an artistic motor.

Inventor of wearing sunglasses at night. Giant egos in drug-fuelled conflict zones. In 1966, Reed separated the band from Warhol, who had produced the first record and designed the legendary banana cover. Reed kicked Cale out in 1968 and quit himself in 1970. What remains is disbanded in 1973, and Haynes captures what follows in fast-forward in a collage of photos and record covers. Cale, Tucker, Mary Woronov, Amy Taubin, Jonathan Richman and many others have their say in the film...

The undeniable beauty of this film lies in the original material, which Haynes has arranged with a sure hand and whose abundance necessitates the frequent use of split screens. Their rhythmic changes not only formally take up the music that is played, they also repeatedly create conclusive contrasts; for example, when one frame of one of Warhol's famous screen tests shows Lou Reed's eternally still face, and in the other one of Jonas Mekas' raging in-camera montages captures the creative chaos that prevailed at the time, and in the synopsis a radicalism is expressed that is not misinterpreted as a bold appeal to the present.

(Text: Alexandra Seitz)