from being to have been
by
Douglas Messerli
Donald
Cammell (writer), Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (directors) Performance / 1970
Certainly, one might be able to describe
his Performance, which I first saw
the year of its creation, as narratively experimental. Co-director and
script-writer Donald Cammell was highly influenced, so he claimed, by the
writings of Jorge Luis Borges—although watching this movie the other day, it
took a great leap of imagination to perceive any possible relationships between
this rather seedy look at a down-and-out British rock star, Turner (Jagger) and
the master of linguistic conundrums.
I don’t actually remember my original
reaction to this film, although it probably was closer to the confusion of
critics of the day which saw it as a messy, but somewhat profound exploration
into identity, than I’d like to admit. So shocking did it seem in 1969 and 1970
that, purportedly, one wife of the Warner executive vomited upon seeing a preview
of the film.
Except for a very crucial difference: the
object of Turner-Pherber-Lucy’s clearly perverse desires, Chas/Johnny Dean
(James Fox) is anything but innocent. As a virulent intimidator of a gang
headed by Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon), Chas musses up the lives and bodies
of nearly anyone who crosses Flowers, and is willing even to do the same for
his former friend (and subtly implied former lover), Joey Maddocks (Anthony
Valentine)—except that Flowers, a wise monster who believes that it is
necessary to keep the personal separate from business, denies his hit-man the
pleasure. When Chas, nonetheless, tries his methods of intimidation on his
former friend/possible lover, Maddocks and his new friends retaliate, pouring
red paint over the walls of Chas’ apartment and threatening him. Chas’ responds
by shooting and killing Maddocks, and, as we all perceive as now necessary, and
rubbing the red paint into his hair, goes on the run.
There are some very clever lines along
the way, one in which Chas’ challenges the rock-singer to imagine what he might
look like when he is 50 (an vision of which challenges us all as Jagger has
turned 74! (He was 47, almost 50 at the time of the film’s making). And the
handsome James Fox, who had portrayed a character similar to that of Turner in
Pinter’s sexually-laced The Servant (1963),
is the nearly perfect figure for Chas.
By the end of Performance it is hard to know what the movie’s intentions truly
are: perhaps to reveal that we all daily “perform” our identities, that there
is little difference between the violence of men with fists and guns and between
men and women with intelligently shifting values? It’s hard to tell. And, by
film’s end, it doesn’t seem to truly matter, since nearly everyone is living in
another reality or are now or soon to be dead.
Surely, there is something fascinating
here about various notions of “power” and their influence upon who we perceive
ourselves to be. But then all of these folks can, by the last credit, only be
perceived to have “been”—perhaps.
Los Angeles,
April 12, 2017
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