Quote from: EXU on January 15, 2019, 03:41:18 AM
Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard
I've been obsessing over Rowland for the last year or so and it was a bitch to find this one but it is worth. It is effete as hell with moody lights, spoken word vignettes and stuff but so was Rowland, so it fits and doesn't feel forced. It is vague and at the same time doesn't seems shallow, much like the aura of the subject, and I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece but it is very good. I didn't found it depressing as people have said, even with the ending going very down with Rowland, I just found it celebratory and even if it paints him as an unquestionable genius (an approach I don't like) it didn't bothered me because it transpired a lot of care, sensibility and love for the subject. The people interviewed are interesting esp. Nick Cave (obviously) and I am in love with Rowland first wife.
I would love to have 3 hour docs on The Birthday Party, These Immortal Souls and Solo Rowland going deep in all the nerdy stuff but this 2 hour movie does a fine job at being a music biography of a ghost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpP9iWupUo0
Yeah, its a good and enjoyable doco - but sometimes the 'talking heads' like Henry Rollins feels a bit too much of posthumous arse-kissing.
Incidentally before his death I lived on the same street as Rowland in St Kilda (Melbourne, Australia). Despite being gravely ill (...a walking corpse in fact), he could be regularly spotted walking around the neighbourhood - and always in a full dapper suit regardless of the heat.
Then after his death they named an unnamed pedestrian lane in St Kilda after him - it is a lane often frequented by junkies, prostitutes and random acts of violence - so rather apt really! Prior to its renaming to Rowland S Howard Lane, my wife and I referred to it as 'Blood Alley' given the few occasions of us finding large random pools of blood!
