Tommy
                                                                                      
Director: Ken Russell
Year: 1975
Rating: 5.0
Tommy was such an iconic record when it was released by the Who in 1969. A Rock Opera that told a story and was filled with one great song after another. It was an enormous musical leap for the Who, who two years earlier had released The Who Sell Out to general indifference. Pete Townsend wanted to get away from your standard album of ten 3-minute songs. It took six months to record the double album and it was immediately met with critical rapture. Within a few years it was adapted into a ballet, an opera on stage and a symphony. So it is not surprising that it was made into a film. I had never bothered to see this till now for reasons that now escape me. Odd, since I like the album so much. Maybe instinct.



To me it feels as if the record was run over by a two-ton tractor. Incredibly excessive and indulgent. It made me think of that Monty Python routine in which the enormously large diner takes one more bite and begins vomiting in huge, long distant gushes of bile. It is just too much folderol. I had my own internal interpretation while listening to the album, but now they will be replaced by this never-ending cascade of decadently artistic images that gave me a migraine. That this drowns in excess comes as no surprise since it is directed by Ken Russell. Famous for his flamboyant saturated style in such films as The Devils and his biographies of the classical composers. Only he could take the character of Harry Palmer and ruin it in the idiotic over the top Billion Dollar Brain.



I hated sections of this while still admiring Russell's ambition and enjoying the performances of Ann-Margret and the physicality of Roger Daltrey. Ann-Margret won a few awards for her don't hold back acting. In the early 60s, she released a few albums that are good mellow pop. I knew I was in trouble right at the start when he devotes the first few minutes to having Mr. and Mrs. Walker (Robert Powell and Ann-Margaret) having sex in a freezing waterfall. The film is all singing (no dialogue) with a few additional so-so songs added.



Basically, a series of musical videos taped together by the narrative of the young boy becoming deaf, mute and blind when he witnesses a horrific event. His mother Nora meets Uncle Frank (a lizard-like Oliver Reed) and they marry and bring up Tommy. He is sexually abused by Uncle Ernie (Keith Moon) which feels really creepy when you realize that years later Townsend was caught with child porn on his computer. Bizarre overwrought performances by Tina Turner as the Acid Queen and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard and a muted one by Eric Clapton as the leader of a Marilyn Monroe cult.



The film improves when Daltrey takes over the role of Tommy and sings a few of the songs. Still by the end it was a two-hour slog through sticky melting excess for me. I was fully expecting to read negative reviews, but many people loved this film. Just not my cup of tea. At the same time, it is hard to think of what else a film of Tommy could or should have been.