Performance
d. Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg, 1970
Stunning and mystifying, Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg's 1970 work Performance is an all-too eerie film. It's such an unshakable experience not so much because of what the film itself presents, but for the very fact that, even after sitting through the entire movie, I still know very little about it. Characters are there on the screen, but they're never fully developed. Mick Jagger's rock star, for instance, is as valuable to Performance as a stained glass window with his portrait.
The story--what there is of it--concerns a British gangster getting too into his violent work, leading to the death of one of his colleagues. Scared, Chas runs away and ends up renting the basement of Jagger's building. Needless to say, the gangster does not fit in with the artist's hippie crew--the only reason Jagger lets him stay is because Chas tells him he is a different sort of artist, a juggler. From what we can derive of Chas, he's both anti-establishment, anti-individuality, and hates drugs, foreigners, and free love. However, Cammell, who wrote the film, and Roeg, who shot it, never really hit on any of these strands. Instead, they are allowed to weave in and out of the frame, never really becoming more than vague little notes.
In the end, Performance is undeniably fascinating, mostly due to Roeg's expert photography and the formal, exacting rigor every scene has. At its best, the film works as an avant-garde experience closer to Warhol and Garrel than whatever it was the filmmakers were going for. The scenes in Jagger's den are as hypnotic as they are terrifying.
I have no idea what the film, and its ending particular, means, but by the end of Performance--as in countless films from the 70s--it hardly matters. Jagger's crazed and lovely performance alone is reason to sit through this film. Who knows? It might even make sense after another viewing.
