The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes – 2021 – USA

This film is a great reminder that we need more documentaries to be made by auteur filmmakers. It feels like 95% of them are pretty much all cut from the same cloth. Archival photos, interviews, reenactments, narration; always utilized in unsurprising, unchallenging ways. Most documentarians seem to accept that those are the tools available and all you can do is use them while staying in the lanes marked by the flow of traffic. This is why so few documentaries are thought of as art, and why the few exceptional ones are so unforgettable, like The Mystery of Picasso, Woodstock, The Thin Blue Line or Lessons of Darkness. Anyone interested in classic rock history has probably come across most of the information in Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground before. What makes it a new and engaging experience is Haynes’ immersive treatment of not just the material but the presentation. For approximately the first quarter of the film, he replicates the split screen format of one of Andy Warhol’s most famous films, The Chelsea Girls, of 1966, the same year he discovered the Velvet Underground. Footage from the 60s runs as unidentified voices speak, telling the band’s story in a measured way. Eventually the film settles into a more standard style, but the vibe established from the beginning is maintained. Additionally, Haynes does two more things that make a documentary effective, maintaining dispassion while showing intense interest in the subject, and most importantly, using the film itself as a way to highlight the spiritual connections between artists, art works and generations. In other words, we’re not merely looking at a documentary about a subject; it’s one artist reflecting on the work of another, praising, illuminating and taking inspiration.