Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – Svengali
Written by Jamie Richards
Sunday, 16 November 2014 04:00
Svengali (Universal Pictures UK)
Ever seen or heard a band that are completely unknown and thought “they should be massive; everyone should or could enjoy these”? I imagine a lot of you who visit the tangled web pages of Uber Rock could very likely answer that question in the affirmative. Well that’s the basis for one of the funniest, warmest movies of 2014, Svenagali.
Small town boy Dixie has an imagination and ambition that his surroundings simply cannot even come close to containing, and when he discovers a band on YouTube during a late night trawling session his life is forever changed. Based on writer (and star) Johnny Owens’ own experiences in a band during his youth, Svengali, whilst being a film about the music business, is truly (like most good films) a story about people; people who try hard, sometimes getting it right, sometimes not; and about the relationships that occur and grow along the way, as well as the ones that never make it the distance.
Throwing in his less than fulfilling career as a postman in the Welsh valleys, Dixie whisks his sweetheart Shell to a new life in the ‘dazzling’ city of London. Alone and pretty much broke he sets about first tracking down the band he believes in, and through a series of occasionally triumphant but usually calamitous events his world rises and falls as he follows his own protocol on how to ‘break’ his new colleagues into the big time, usually to poor Shell’s extreme frustration and displeasure.
The characters he encounters along the way are truly what make the film, whether his old mate from school ‘Horsey’ (now working as an A&R man in the record business) ignoring Dixie’s pleas for help, and acting every inch the deluded tool we imagine these people to be, or Matt Berry’s incredibly over the top performance as the label boss whose every whim is fawned upon by two scantily clad girls. Then there’s Martin Freeman popping up in a few scenes as hilariously up-tight, hen-pecked record shop owner Don, driven to distraction by Dixie’s bumbling attempts at help.
In a line-up of stand-out performances, though, one wins through, with his last role of a distinguished career Brian Hibbard portrays Dixie’s father with the pathos we have come to expect from the man over the years. He sits upon a Welsh hillside with his beloved son, and playing a man approaching the final days of his life, he recounts his first day at work in a coal mine, in a scene that is both funny and moving, as well as being incredibly poignant as Hibbard was indeed suffering from terminal prostate cancer at the time and would not live to see the film released.
Svengali is a funny and engaging movie that a lot of people will relate to, and with a cool soundtrack featuring greats like Mott the Hoople, Small Faces and the Stone Roses alongside contemporary names like The Keys and The Libertines what more could you want? Okay, how about a line-up of cameo appearances headed by Alan Mcgee of Creation records fame; that do you? If you haven’t seen it yet, go and rectify that and I promise you won’t regret it.
https://www.facebook.com/svengalipage
