Today, the grail that revived me at a fortuitous time was Almost Famous, the semi-autobiographical film from Cameron Crowe (my second-favorite Crowe). This is his masterpiece. A warm, exuberant, charming movie, it kept a smile on my face from start to finish. Like High Fidelity, this is a loving testimonial to how music can infuse and inspire a life (though I've got say, opening the film with a Chipmunks song undermines this theory). It's got the whole package: the smart and witty writing of Say Anything and Singles, true emotion without the sappy overkill of Jerry Maguire, crackling energy, and transcendent performances from all the actors.
Set in 1973, it follows fifteen-year-old William Miller (Patrick Fugit) as he drops out of high school to travel with the rising band Stillwater, on an assignment from Rolling Stone. (Here's a note to the moralistic pontificators who yelp that America's youth is being corrupted by the entertainment industry -- Cameron Crowe was a kid who spent his formative years listening to drug-inspired music and traveling with hard-drinking, drug-using, groupie-hopping rock stars, and look what happened to him: he's writing and directing Academy Award-nominated movies! Dear god! -- I hope those immoral purveyors of filth are proud of what they've done!)
Fugit is terrific as the wise-beyond-his-years freelancer (equally good is the kid who plays the younger version of the same character in a prologue). Frances McDormand is superb, as always, funny and touching as his over-protective mother, who is Cool Mom one moment and a scary alarmist the next (she won't let her kids listen to Simon and Garfunkel because she's convinced they're a bad influence). Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn's daughter, is unexpectedly good as the "band aid" (her term for "groupie") Penny Lane, veering back and forth across the line from child-like enthusiasm to sad maturity. Indie stalwart Philip Seymour Hoffman gives an acid, too brief performance as legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, who befriends William and helps him through his personal and writing crises (when William notes that his high-school classmates don't like him, Hoffman replies snidely, "Well, don't worry -- you'll meet them again on their long road to the middle").
But I've got to give a whole paragraph to Billy Crudup. I fall passionately in love with him every time I see him in a movie, and an article on him in the most recent Premiere magazine made me respect him as well. He's just amazing, and he gives his character here, Stillwater's lead guitarist Russell Hammond, a complex blend of charisma, arrogance, and innocence. The two scenes he has with Frances McDormand, one of which is over the telephone, are absolutely perfect. (An odd note: his love interest in Almost Famous wears a brown suede coat with a long, white, fur collar that looks identical to the one his love interest in Jesus' Son wore. Guess those coats were mighty popular in the '70s.)
I can already guarantee that Almost Famous will be on my top ten list at the end of the year. It's far beyond what I expected, and I expected a lot. It had to be something special to make me feel good after the past two days I've endured, and it was. There are a few minor flaws that I could point out, but I just don't feel like doing so. Almost Famous made me laugh, it hit me in the heart, and in a couple of dazzling scenes, like where Crudup faces the crowd at a Stillwater show backlit by a halo of blazing lights, it literally took my breath away. This is as close to a sure thing as I've seen this year -- go see it.
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