Lou Reed's Berlin.

"What a beautiful and strange album Lou Reed gave us with Berlin, with its haunted and melancholic lyrics about a relationship being dragged down into the depths of despair, with a little bit of heroin and a little bit of suicide and a little bit of loathing and a section where the main character's children are taken away by social workers," writes Jeremiah Kipp in Slant. "And yet this tragic record achieved an intense, crystalline grace with the weight of its orchestral accompaniment, its choir of young voices and lyrics containing the specificity of romantic detail one remembers in the haze of reminiscence.... Some concert documentaries give one an impression of watching a show, and experiencing the performance in a secondhand way but still enjoying the vicarious experience. Others, such as Lou Reed's Berlin, seem like the movie experience gets in its own way."

Updated through 7/18.

"Yes, this may be Lou Reed's Berlin, but it's more a bygone New York experience than having a subway bum puke on your lap," writes Camille Dodero in the Voice. "For one, Reed and [director Julian] Schnabel are both such uniquely 800-pound New York gorillas, they belong in the Bronx Zoo. For two, Berlin was just a handy 'metaphor' - Reed told the Times he'd never been back then - and what better fractured-relationship trope than a Cold War locus with an impenetrable wall and an east/west divide?... Schnabel somehow magically makes the subdued hues of St Ann's Warehouse in 2006] feel like a grand loft space."

Henry Stewart in the L Magazine: "In contrast to, say, Shine a Light's big-screen verve, Berlin is YouTube-ready: visually banal, spiritlessly assembled. Its camera movements feel arbitrary, which suggests a reproachable lack of pre-production (or stoned camera operators)."

Earlier: Reviews from Toronto.

At Film Forum.

Updates: "There's a green-robed children's choir, two backup singers, a small orchestra and a rock ensemble, but it's mainly a chance for Schnabel to illustrate - as in Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - an artist's agony," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "For him, Berlin isn't glam-rock nostalgia; it's a still-relevant expression of the hell that he and Reed know people inflict on each other. Schnabel calls it 'Love's darker sisters: rage, jealousy, loss.'"

"Lou Reed's Berlin can't quite take its place in the pantheon of great concert films, because Schnabel's cameras rarely seem to be in a useful place, and his pointless lo-fi recreations of the album's story look cheap and intermittently pretentious," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "But for Reed fans - for rock fans - the movie is an essential document of a noteworthy event."

Updates, 7/18: "Those songs are some of the most melodic and tender of Mr Reed's career," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "The original record, produced by Bob Ezrin in the grand style of 70s concept albums, is Mr Reed's most operatic. For the concert, in addition to basic rock instrumentation, intensely dramatic arrangements with four horn and reed players, two violas and a cello were used. In the more contemplative passages, the music seems to hover as though holding its breath until the last second before a storm breaks. When it does, the guitars swell to a howling crescendo that evokes the passing of a tornado."

"The mixture of onstage valediction with vintage melodramatic lyrical degradation that makes up Lou Reed's Berlin is frankly an odd sensibility cocktail, and Mr Schnabel's filmic approach doesn't really make it go down any smoother," writes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun. "Despite the director's dogged attempts (aided considerably by the excellent cinematographer Ellen Kuras) to avoid merely documenting the proceedings from front-row center, Lou Reed's Berlin remains a concert film, through and through. And, as is often the case with live rock and roll committed to film (the Stones's catastrophic performance at the Altamont Speedway in the Maysles brothers' Gimme Shelter notwithstanding), it's difficult to shake the impression that it would've been a lot more fun to have been there."

Lou Reed's Berlin "makes most other concert films look like what they are, wimpy and nonessential," argues Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. "So intensely displeasurable is the album that you may end up loving it, and director Julian Schnabel is smart enough to stay out of the way of the music." Reed's is "one of the most fascinating performances of the year."

"As a concert film, Lou Reed's Berlin is a little closer to The Song Remains the Same than The Last Waltz, engaging in digressions and hallucinations of the album's protagonists, Caroline and Jim, as much as in the band's sometimes thunderous, sometimes chilling performance," writes Leo Goldsmith in Reverse Shot. There are also "newly shot dramatic sequences starring Emmanuelle Seigner as Caroline, and credited to Schnabel's daughter, Lola. The irony here is pungent, especially when Reed sings of those 'men of poor beginnings' who 'have no rich daddy to fall back on.' But while this bit of nepotism (and the press notes' revelation that Lola is a junior at Cooper Union) will be cause enough for many to dismiss her contribution, this is partly a work about parents and children, and Lola's work here still very much of a piece with her father's. More importantly, it fits with the retrospective angst of the entire project, conjuring Reed's own ersatz evocations of Brecht/Weill villainy in a canny succession of styles from New York's avant-garde cinema."

"One thing you should know," warns Christopher Campbell at Cinematical, "is that Lou Reed has personally instructed theaters to play the film at concert-level volume. That means it's really, really loud.... Perhaps Berlin was ahead of its time. Or maybe Reed just should have begun performing the album right away; with the kind of supporting talent he brought to St Ann's Warehouse that weekend in 2006. I'd like to meet the rock critic who could speak negatively of the grand execution of 'Caroline Says I.' I'd also like to meet the person who doesn't feel emotional during 'The Bed,' a song about suicide that, in the concert/film, prominently features a dozen, mostly female teens from the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who all appear to be on the verge of tears while singing backup."

Posted by dwhudson at July 17, 2008 6:00 AM