Film review: Lou Reed's Berlin

Published on Thursday 24 July 2008 20:00

LOU REED'S BERLIN (12A) ***

DIRECTED BY: JULIAN SCHNABEL

DISMISSED, trashed and subsequently ignored upon its release, Lou Reed's 1973 concept album Berlin has been rediscovered and reappraised in recent years – enough at least to prompt rock's grouchiest godfather to perform it live for the first time.

Shot over several nights at an intimate Brooklyn space in 2006, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Julian Schnabel brings his painterly eye to the dreaded concert movie and makes a slightly better fist of it than Scorsese did recently with his Rolling Stones travesty, Shine a Light. That's perhaps because he's got themes and a narrative to work with, thus has been freed somewhat from massaging the ego of his subject.

That said, the very fact that Reed conceived an entire album of songs charting a doomed love affair between a couple of junkies living in Germany doesn't absolve the film of pomp, but Schnabel keeps a tighter rein on the album's prog rock pretensions than he perhaps needed to, limiting it to some specially commissioned video backdrops designed to compliment Reed's lyrics about life in the gutter.

It's probably essential viewing for dedicated Reed fans, but for the agnostic, it's doesn't do what great concert movies should: make you wish you could have been there.