What? I haven’t reviewed this one yet?!?

This is one of my all-time favourite movies. This viewing was the original theatrical cut, and though I prefer the longer “bootleg” / “Untitled” cut, there’s barely any difference except the length. It’s just, if you love the movie, you just don’t want it to end: that’s why I think the longer cut is better. This movie is pure love to me.

I’m guessing I first watched this movie in 2003 (it certainly wasn’t last year but I remember thinking at the time ‘why has it taken me so long to see this?’) and the biggest reason for my love of it is how much it changed my love of music. In a way, the movie acted for me the same way Zooey Deschanel as William Miller’s sister does for him when he is a young boy – dropping a handful of hints about what rocks, hints that lead to a whole journey of personal and musical discovery. “One day, you’ll be cool,” she tells the 11-year-old in flat-on, talk to the camera close-up before she leaves, one of my favourite shots of this or any movie. If only all of us could have such a big sister. When she reappears at the end, the relief is so palpable. Zooey Deschanel must be onscreen for less than 10 minutes of the movie but she makes a hell of an impression.

I love how real the movie comes across. Of course it’s all partly Cameron Crowe’s autobiography, but even the little things like character names etc come across as very authentic. After first viewing the movie I was entirely convinced that there really was a band called Stillwater back in the Seventies (there actually was, apparently, but they weren’t anything like the Stillwater in the movie).

But most of all, my love of this movie is down to two things – the blending of Nancy Wilson’s score and Kate Hudson’s performance as Penny Lane. When both are working together, like when Penny first meets Russell Hammond, and when she asks William “What … kind of beer?”, and when she’s dancing alone in a post-concert empty hall; this movie touches me like nothing else but love itself. I want to be with these people, I want to sit on that bus and sing “Tiny Dancer”, I want Frances McDormand to be my overconcerned mom, Zooey Deschanel to be my offbeat big sis, I want to be around these people who say things like, “If you ever get lonely, just go the record store and visit your friends.” This movie is as much a part of my life as any movie will ever be, I love it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 1:20 pm in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as ethereal, music, romance, Seventies, sister, soundtrack, top 250. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.