“Lou Reed records the album Berlin in 1973. It was a commercial failure. Over the next 33 years, he never performed the album live. For five nights in December 2006 at St. Ann’s Warehouse Brooklyn, Lou Reed performed his masterwork about love’s dark sisters: jealousy, rage and loss.” – Julian Schnabel
It’s played at the Toronto Film Festival and Venice Film Festival last year. It’s played at the SXSW Film Festival and now the Tribeca Film Festival and there’s not even a proper trailer out for it yet! (scratch that we just found one over at the Weinstein Company site) Well, we all won’t have to wait too long, “Lou Reed’s Berlin” (directed by insufferable teddy bear artiste Julian Schnabel) will finally hit theaters proper – or at least small repetory theaters come July 18 (in New York it opens at the estimable Film Forum).
The film synopsis:
A searing song cycle about two lovers going to pieces in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Lou Reed’s Berlin was greeted by a chorus of rebuke upon its release in 1973. Crushed, Reed and his producer, Bob Ezrin, left the record to gather dust in the archives. But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity-Berlin was rediscovered, anointed a misunderstood masterpiece, added to the pantheon.
And how, we’ve always been a big fan (though Street Hassle is still our fave). The film also features Sharon Jones of the Dap Kings and Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus as guests. Additionally the doc boasts the work of estimable rock-cinematographer Ellen Kuras (“Shine A Light,” Young: Heart of Gold” for Jonathan Demme, and was personally hand-picked by Bob Dylan himself to shoot his “No Direction Home” interviews for the doc. )
The concert documentary also gets a little arty (it is Schnabel afterall) and it features moments with Roman Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner (“The Butterfly & The Diving Bell”) as a stand-in for the main female character, Caroline, in the Berlin story.
Julian Schanel’s set design creates the backdrop of a hotel with greenish walls and with Lola Schnabel’s films displaying the beauty and tragedy of the narrator’s leading lady (Emmanuelle Seigner) the experience is devastating and beautiful.
And finally, some congratulations have to go out to Mr. Reed and his long-time partner, the asymmetrically coiffed artisan vocoder-enthusiast Laurie Anderson. The pair were two of New York’s hippest couples for over 20 years and they recently got married earlier this month in secret. We’re so happy we forgive Lou for snoring so loudly during a 2007 Tribeca screening of “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man” (he unfortunately sat right behind us).
Watch: Lou Reed – “The Kids” (from Berlin)