God Help The Girl

[Chriddof]

"no one ever shed a tear to a Bowie record"

Stuart Murdoch is a fucking liar.

[mojo filters]

Stuart Murdoch is a fucking liar.

I thought that line had significant, relatable potential. I like and appreciate a lot of Bowie's music, but have never found it emotive.

I think Stuart Murdoch was attempting to make a pertinent and salient point. Unfortunately it was delivered in the most inelegant, ham-fisted fashion. Hence it failed to resonate as intended.

I think the kindest thing to say about Stuart and the God Help The Girl film, was that he significantly over reached. I still admire his ambition and effort, however I'm left questioning his judgement in respect of the final execution.

At the end of the day, a naive yet ambitious man attempting to explore new forms of artistic expression is relatively harmless.

I think a certain amount of admiration is due, for his tenacity in following through on such a dear passion project. The sadness comes from the decline that followed his initial attempts and intentions. If the quality of the film had improved on the original soundtrack, we would be in a different place re appraisal of the final product!

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I saw it when it was released. Since then, it has stricken me how poorly executed the whole thing is. Murdoch's heart may be in the right place but the stage numbers are incredibly clumsy, straight out of a TV show that would air on daytime for the elderly in retirement homes. Compare this to Sing Street, and it's night and day.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I was in bands as a youngster. There was nothing in this movie that reminded me of the many interesting and exhilarating experiences I had.

I thought most effective nostalgia came from the unglamorous performance spaces, which immediately reminded me of cheap beer, stained carpets, tacky and dated decor, overflowing ashtrays, and all the other hallmarks of northern social clubs and similar places from my misspent youth.

In terms of the plot, the whole notion of the band in the film seemed merely like a framing device to eventually integrate the protagonists with the score. There seemed to be no deeper exploration of the culture and experience involved in bands starting out and so forth.

There were some attempts at memorable dialogue concerning the band - I thought the whole "band name concept" conversation raised some interesting issues, but just like the attempted smart line about "no one ever shed a tear to a Bowie record" it all fell flat through a combination of unconvincing delivery and very clumsy writing of the dialogue itself.

I'm quite the sucker for musicals too, but they need to be done well. It's a complex and difficult genre to master, whether producing for stage, screen or whatever medium.

Stuart Murdoch was clearly not skilled enough to pull off a slick musical film. I doubt many first-time directors are. I still think he could have better realised his own vision for the movie, if he'd handed off important tasks (eg cinematography, editing) to more experienced folks who know what they're doing in this genre,

The only high quality musical I can think of that was done to perfection by a novice in the genre, was the Buffy episode Once More With Feeling. What is even more remarkable about that was Joss Whedon's lack of experience writing music in any professional capacity.

The weird thing with the band side of things is that it seemed to have a heightened feel to it, like it was more of a fantasy than a reality (like the scene where they put up ads for bandmates and end up being chased by a massive bunch of people), part of me wants to suggest that James was an unreliable narrator and making certain scenes more fantastical than they really were (like when they arrive at the dance hall and the band are already on stage, and happy for Eve to start singing) but I don't think that's actually the case and I'm just being very kind to Stuart Murdoch there.

I completely understand all of the issues the majority of people have with it too (and definitely have some of my own), yet I still liked it a lot. I guess I was just in a very forgiving mood when I watched it.