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Review by E.C. McMullen Jr. |
 TOMMY- 1975USA Release: March 19, 1975 RSO, Hemdale, Columbia Pictures Ratings: USA: PG |
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The scares are few but the Horrors are genuine and the whole musical is Thrilling as, inspired by Pete Townsend's own childhood, it unravels the Mystery of Tommy so,
Here we go!
There's a stark difference between the movies of THE WHO and other musicians or bands like Elvis Presely or The Beatles.
That difference is the entirety of the movie is based on two record album by THE WHO.
Plenty of bands have made concept albums but ridiculously few had feature films based on every song in that album, let alone have that movie be a smash hit. Let alone to have their previous hit songs from that album become hits again when covered by other musicians on the movie sound track album.
So what happened? And how?
TOMMY begins with a man on a mountain top, standing before a setting sun.
We will know the man as Captain Walker (Robert Powell: DOOMWATCH [TV], ASYLUM, HARLEQUIN, THE SURVIVOR, THE JIGSAW MAN, FRANKENSTEIN [1984], WHAT WAITS BELOW, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD [1993]) comes down the mountain to his young wife Nora (Ann-Margaret: MAGIC, MEMORY). They enjoy each other's company, they make love, he's called to war, they tearfully say goodbye.
Soon Captain Walker is shot down in battle as his wife stays back in London as the buzz bombs fall. She has a nightmare of his death as if a premonition.
Dark, then sunlight as a nurse pulls back a curtain announcing, "It's a boy, Mrs. Walker, it's a boy!"
England has won and on this first day of peace, Tommy is born. "We've won! A son!"
Now Mother and child, alone, face an uncertain future together. Single, widowed Moms were all over the country after, what came to be known as World War Two, and the rebuilding of society's infrastructure took precedence over all.
After all the heroic young men who wanted to fight for their country went off to war, all that was left among the men in Great Britain were the draft dodgers and creeps.
Nora soon finds a pudgy smiling doof, Frank (Oliver Reed: THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, NIGHT CREATURES, THE DAMNED, PARANOIAC, THE SHUTTERED ROOM, Z.P.G., TEN LITTLE INDIANS, BLUE BLOOD, BURNT OFFERINGS, David Cronenberg's THE BROOD, VENOM, SPASMS, GOR, THE HOUSE OF USHER, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, SEVERED TIES) who fits the lowered expectations of "man" in that era. Throughout his lascivious octopus stroll all over her body, which Mom desperately wants, he assures her that he'll be more than an Uncle,
TRIVIA TOMMY is the 2nd cycle in Ken Russell's trilogy of musicals/operas. The first was Mahler with Robert Powell as the eponumous composer. |
"I'll be just like a Dad!"
Young Tommy, who only knows of his real father in photographs, accepts this new family dynamic and all would be wonderful...
Except...
Throughout the months and years following World War Two there were many soldiers who eventually found their way back home. Many suffered from head trauma: concussions that temporarily caused full or partial amnesia. As the UN went through the laborious process of finding these people in hospitals or working on farms, and rehabilitated them as best they could while the whole of Europe rebuilt itself, these men were released, having passed the bare-bones minimum of "restored". Whatever other psychological problems they may have from shell chock to the then unheard of PTSD, would just have to work itself out.
There are too many victims, not enough heroes, since most of the heroes are dead. As always, the exploiters and creeps win by default after a major war.
The Return of Captain Walker!
Imagine Tommy's surprise when he wakes up late one night to see his father from the photographs kept beside statues of Jesus, Captain Walker, looking in on his 4-ish year old son. The man smiles. His face is deeply scarred but Tommy instantly knows who this heroic saint is.
Then Captain Walker goes to his own room and everything goes to hell.
Captain Walker is killed by Tommy's new father, Frank, who roused from sleep, had no idea of the stranger in their bedroom yelling at him and his wife. when the lights are on and all realize what is happening, Mother shouts,
"What about the boy? What about the boy he saw it all!"
In the heat of the moment, Frank cowers in panic answering,
"He didn't see it! He didn't hear it! He won't say nothing to no one, never in his life!"
Instantly a pact is made as Tommy's Mother begs and Stepfather Frank orders the shocked child,
"You didn't hear it! You didn't see it! You won't say nothing to no one ever in your life! You never heard it! How absurd it all seems without any proof! You didn't see it! You never heard it! Not a word of it! You won't say nothing to no one, never tell a soul what you know is the truth!"
From that moment on all three are cursed as Tommy, traumatized, goes mute and loses his sense of hearing and sight.
"Now he is deaf. Now he is dumb. Now he is blind. The guilty are safe but always accused by his empty eyes."
So begins the twisted tale of Tommy, who on his own, gravitates to mirrors where he blindly stares at himself for hours on end.
He eventually reaches adulthood (played by Roger Daltrey: LISZTOMANIA, THE LEGACY).
Now other damaged and flawed members of his circle, like his guilt ridden pill-popping, alcoholic Mom, takes Tommy to evangelists like The Preacher (Eric Clapton), and Doctors like The Specialist (Jack Nicholson: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, THE RAVEN, THE TERROR, CHINATOWN, THE SHINING, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, Tim Burton's BATMAN, WOLF, MARS ATTACKS). Or Frank, who leaves Tommy with his sadistic Cruel Cousin Kevin or his pedophile Weird Uncle Ernie, even delving into illicit hallucinogenics via a prostitue named Gypsy the Acid Queen (Tina Turner: MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME). They all try to help him in their own messed up way and that too can never work. and one day wanders out of the family house where he is eventually found in a junkyard, surprisingly enough, winning game after game on an old pinball machine.
He becomes a celebrity after beating the former Pinball Wizard (Elton John), and that begats a religion of enlightenment via pinball, as the years pass from Post WW2 Britain to 1960s hippie culture and counter-culture looking for modern Messiahs.
Yet through it all no one is able to hear Tommy's inner plea,
"See me. Hear me. Touch me. Heal me."
At the end of her rope, drug addled, drunk, angry, but wealthy from Tommy's earnings, Nora vents her frustrations.
"What's it all worth when my son is blind? He can't hear the music nor enjoy what I'm buying. His life his worthless, affecting mine! I'd pay any price to drive his plight from my mind"
In her frustration she accidentally defenestrates him, nearly killing him.
The only path to Tommy's salvation lies with him alone: A Miracle Cure!
Now we have a movie!
It's rare to think of a movie where the Horror of the moment becomes the whole of the environment for the characters that I know of no other story or movie that has ever done it. Sure you can have a whole story, even a novel or movie, take place in a haunted castle, ship, what have you, but for the Horror to oppressively haunt a family endlessly for decades? And then have that Horror consumed by a willilng nation to feed upon it?
Yet such was songwriter, Pete Townsend's, Rock Opera. Tommy is endlessly abused by family who know that they can get away with all manner of perversions because Tommy can never speak of the Horrors visited upon him.
...but now he can. With the world's eyes on the new Messiah, what will Tommy do? How can he be stopped?
Director Ken Russell (LISZTOMANIA, ALTERED STATES, LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, GOTHIC) let himself go with TOMMY, and it shows in all its ageless wonderment to this day.
Four Shriek Girls.
This review copyright 2009 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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