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Downtown 81

2001, Movie, NR, 72 mins

Downtown 81: Review

DOWNTOWN 81
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As a piece of cinematic art, this meandering, shambolic film isn't much to speak of, but as a time capsule, it's priceless. Written and produced by pop-culture critic Glenn O'Brien and directed by photographer Edo Bertoglio, this street-level tour of the bruised underside of the Big Apple was originally shot in 1980-81 under the title "New York Beat" but shelved soon after due to financial difficulties. Twenty years later, the film has been reassembled and is only now seeing the light of day. The intervening years have been kind: What might have been dismissed at the time as a curiosity along the lines of MONDO NEW YORK is now a fascinating relic from a faraway place: New York City, circa 1981, when the Lower East Side looked more like the South Bronx, and the South Bronx looked like Sarajevo. The late painter Jean Michel Basquiat stars as Jean, a struggling artist/musician who's released from the hospital only to find himself locked out of his apartment until he can come up with the $426(!) he owes in back rent. Jean grabs one of his canvases and hits the grimy streets of the not-yet-gentrified Lower East Side, searching for the beautiful stranger (Anna Schroder) he met on his way home, a place to crash and anyone willing to pay $500(!!) for his painting. Jean's quest takes him to some of the hottest spots on the burgeoning downtown music scene where some of the hippest bands just happen to be playing — Calypso-inflected funk monsters Kid Creole and the Coconuts are caught tearing the roof off the long-gone Peppermint Lounge, while avant-rock violinist Walter Steding plays a freight elevator at the storied Mudd Club — and a series of narrative digressions take Jean to various rehearsal spaces and studios in time to check out the likes of Tuxedomoon, DNA, and the fabulously plastic Plastics. There's little reason for this self-described fairy tale, but there's plenty of rhythm and rhyme; in addition to the featured bands, the non-synch soundtrack is overlaid with bobbing, pseudo-beat poetry set to skronky free jazz. It's more than a bit amateurish, but like other such scene-capturing films as Uli Lommel's BLANK GENERATION, the film perfectly captures the sights and sounds of a particular place and time that is sadly gone for good. Basquiat was 19 years old when production began, and the fact that he, too, would soon be gone only adds to the film's poignancy. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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