October 27: Gimme Danger (2016 - Jim Jarmusch)

★★★

Gimme Danger has a few nice cinematic gestures, but it doesn’t go far beyond telling the chronological story of Iggy Pop and The Stooges.  There’s ample space that the film could have investigated, but instead, Jarmusch simply says what happened when, though he dresses it up well enough to keep us engaged.

One of its more effective elements is the film's starting in media res, with The Stooges at the point of breaking up.  Jarmusch then takes us back to Iggy’s upbringing, the coming together of the band, and the early successes that led to the time that started the film.  From there, we follow The Stooges into their future of glam rock, punk and beyond.  It’s a clever way to organize the plot in what’s basically a chronologically-told story.

Although the spine of the film is Iggy giving us his account of the group from a chair, Jarmusch dribbles in interesting extras to keep us interested in the content.  He intercuts short comments by other band members, and he finds relevant clips from TV and movies that visually comment on Iggy’s words.  He also uses home videos and still images to break up the Iggy narration, and script across the screen fills in some history.  One of the more fun devices is when Jarmusch uses animation to illustrate one of Iggy’s points, even cutting to an animated figure that is mouthing Iggy’s words.  All these elements help to keep us involved in what’s happening.

What emerges is the story of the development of one stream of rock music as experienced by a band near its center, but there is material here for even more interesting stories.  For example, Jarmusch could have followed more of the connections between the music of The Stooges and other types of music and art.  At one point, Iggy mentions the Ann Arbor music scene experimentation that fed into their work, and it would have been a unique contribution if Gimme Danger had been able to look at how an avant-garde, interdisciplinary scene that went from the musical experimentation of John Cage to theater contributed to the emerging aesthetic of The Stooges.  And on into the music developments that followed.

There is also an interesting story about art, the artist and creativity in Iggy himself.  From his narration, we understand that Iggy used his body to express himself.  From his earliest days, he played drums, the most bodily-engaged of rock's instruments.  And at one point later, he talks about wanting to express an opinion but, being unable to do that verbally, he just did somersaults around the room.  We also see that in The Stooges’ performances Iggy’s body is his instrument.  He connects to the crowd with his gyrations, even to the point of jumping into it.  He also describes jamming with his guitarist by his movements, the guitar riffing on Iggy’s motion while Iggy is doing the same to the guitar.  It’s a fascinating way to see the art of The Stooges and one we might wish we'd heard more about.

What Jarmusch gives us of The Stooges here is a basic narration.  If he doesn’t go far beyond that, Gimme Danger is still an engaging chronological story that gives us insight into one type of music in it’s time.  But the film has interesting little jewels embedded throughout that would certainly warrant more attention.