Customer Reviews

Kill Your Idols

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Enigmatic and deliberately hypocritical, this is not a typical documentary film.

Taking cues more from video art than journalism, the film is structured thematically and is more complex than a linear historical survey. The editing cleverly compiles interviews with the originators of No Wave, newer bands, and Sonic Youth (the bridge between) into a sort of a dialogue of confession and criticism. The director doesn't conceal the fact that the cuts in editing pervert time, which appropriately comments on the medium of documentary film itself.

Shot in NY homes and streets rather than studios, Kill Your Idols meditates on the notion of nostalgia, time, scene, and music history. The film is unique for the ability to display the intentions of art through the musicians' view whether they sound dignified or not. It's clever and cocky and insightful. There are connections and contradictions. There are no pre-chewed short cuts. The film won't tell you what to think, but it will make you do so.

(The hour+ of special features on the DVD are very worth mentioning and include a lengthy, great featurette.)

(4.5 stars) Superficially about the ultra-obscure New York art-punk scene across the past three decades, this cleverly edited film is really a meditation on originality and nostalgia. Made by jack-of-all-trades director S.A. Crary (who directs, shoots, edits, and produces the film) and famously rumored to have been budgeted in the three-figure range, the film's a slickly edited and surprisingly gorgeous tribute to New York's vibrant musical community. From even the opening credits, Kill Your Idols has an attitude in step with the music scene it's surveying, its images and pacing offering a cool reflection of its subject matter. Like the bands it covers, Kill Your Idols is constantly experimenting with form and challenging audience expectations and documentary tradition. Crary splices together interviews so deftly and playfully that the different artists seem to continue each other's thoughts; he goes so far with this technique as to have them alternating words, particularly when listing occurs, etc.. It's a neat technique, one that engages the viewer and creates parallels across generations and geography. The result is not just a documentary ON an artistic movment, but an artistic statement itself--a tone poem to innovation and creative inheritance that serves up its brutal truth with wit and humor. The great success of Kill Your Idols is that it's not just another pre-scripted history of details you can easily source in Wikipedia entries--it's a mishievous commentary and sincere investigation into the notion of history itself. A small, but standout piece in the cluttered world of music documentaries.

This one is really good as documentaries go. I love the interviews especially Lydia Lunch just making fun of all the new kids in the New York music scene... thats the best part!!!

There seems to be an interesting problem that exists with most music documentaries. While the subject matter may be admirable, and often worthy of closer examination, the sheer scope of material needed to be covered is usually so dense that the individual voices profiled are usually truncated into one or two clever sound bites. While this is an understandable restriction of time, it still leaves the viewer with what is essentially a mere sketch of the material reduced into a few colorful footnotes.

As an introductory expose to No Wave for the younger crowd this film does a decent job, but to the more long time fan's of the genre the brief glimpses of interviews with people like Alan Vega, and M.Gira may seem too fleeting.

To be fair S.A. Crary seems to realize this and the DVD comes with almost an hour of extended footage, but the problem really seems to be the nature of the subjects them selves. Ultimately Suicide, Lydia Lunch , and the Swans were all predicated on such remarkable stories that any one of them would make a remarkable 3 hour documentary all on their own. To be sure, M.Gira's anecdote of sending certain dna body fluids of his in a baggie to Robert Christgau after a particularly pejorative review is worth the price of the DVD alone. That being said, even with the additional footage I was still left with a desire for more exhaustive interviews with people like Lydia Lunch , while the cinema of transgression figures Nick Zedd and Richard Kern (an important part of no wave ) didn't even make an on screen appearance at all.Again, I don't feel this is a fault of S.A. Cary's, it's just that the scope of the project has so many facets that even 3 hours seems too restrictive. This brings the other issue - The profile of the contemporary groups performing music.

With the current trend of pop music magazines tripping over themselves to serve up the latest expose of ground zero for cultural hip ness, many of the younger people in the film, by accident or by design, will no doubt be more familiar to most older viewers as the pin up stars staring back at them on the shelves of Borders , and Barnes and Nobel in the magazine section, than the architects of memorable music someone has turned them on to. With their affected hair and their romantic thrift store clothes askew, just so, it's almost too easy to take dismissive pot shots at these 20 something street kid millionaires. The fact remains though, that good looks and white belts with brown pants alone don't garner a following. As a bit of a jaded older person I was pleasantly surprised to find that in fact most of the younger people here like the Yeah Yeah Yeah's are actually very decent pop songwriters , and despite Lydia Lunch's venomous diatribe of that supposed crime, I could respect and see why their following was so strong. Quite simply they're just good musicians.

Black Dice , the Liars and Gogal Bordello respectively are all excellent and compelling and if the film has any point to make, I'd say it's that the spirit that first brought the Velvet Underground together and carried on through other bands in the 70's and the 80's is as strong now as it's ever been. As for the proprietary pissing contest between the old guard bitching about how " real " they were and how phony and illegitimate the newer bands are, really, it's a waste of time. There's enough room in the world for Diamanda Galas and Lady tron.

Prior to watching this documentary about the New York art-music scene of the late 70s/early 80s, I didn't know much about the groups and musicians that are featured -- Lydia Lunch, Swans, Suicide, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Only the more familiar Sonic Youth floats in this churning sea like a comforting lifesaver.

Now having seen "Kill Your Idols," I still can't say I know very much about the groups, but I do know their names and got a sample of their sounds.

The reason for that is because the film tends to put each band under a microscope, tightly sealed under a slide, and it doesn't really provide enough context about the scene itself.

But it almost doesn't matter because "Kill Your Idols" gives viewers a pretty good launching point to discover music most people haven't heard before. The segments that spotlight the early individual bands are all engaging in their own ways and although to say, "I wanted more" is a complaint, it's also a compliment.

Where the movie is less successful, however, is in trying to draw a connection between the previous scene and the current one.

The fusion doesn't really work because most of what you have is the older guys saying the new scene sucks/is contrived/doesn't break any new ground (although for the most part they refuse to name names other than the Strokes). The popular refrain of "music today sucks" is basically repeated through most of the second half of the film.

Meanwhile, the film also presents the younger guys and newer bands who are cast as either carrying or dropping the art-rock torch, and they seem to know what they're talking about, but they don't come off very well -- Karen O. from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs mostly seems smug and disingenuous, and the guys from A.R.E. Weapons dunderheadedly try too hard to be hip; for the most part, only the leader of Gogol Bordello really approaches some good points.

Handsomely shot and edited (although the stylish chapter cards last way too long), this is a good place for a newbie like me to start, but additional research will be required.

It's hard to know exactly what the angle of the filmmaker exactly was in regards to Kill Your Idols. The theme is blurry in my opinion. What is offered is devoid of narrative and built around interviews with emblematic performers from the (brief) No Wave era. What was immediately satisfying is that I had never heard of No Wave before so I appreciated the education. The phrase itself is a great send up of New Wave and it appears that the artists were very much the antithesis of the lively, polished sounds which were presented to our ears on the radio during that era. The interviewees, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, etc. are not very encouraged by what they see today. The describe the contemporary New York sound as being commodified and contrived via the machinations of the studios and rock journalists. With Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore is consulted but the band really seems to have existed on the fringe of this fringe movement. Several current bands are covered and you can see the way in which they are an extension of the No Wave period. As to whether a band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs fit in, I am not sure, and that's what I meant before when I said that the director's perspective was not easily apparent. The musical talent of the groups is also questionable. Many of the figures admit that their songs seemed to be more statement than an expression of talent. The one thing that's certain is that they are fairly negative about the bands making the scene today. Personally, I disagree with Eno's assessment of the Strokes but I understand the way in which the band was not a result of their having experienced authentic New York culture. Gira's memories of living on the street, picking up just enough work to survive, and turning to music from a sense of having no other choice are undoubtedly circumstances not shared by today's headliners. The age that these artists describe does appear to be long gone, but it did provide a stirring creative impulse that benefited those who followed. Kill Your Idols has merit because it illuminates an era of which many of us know nothing.

*Thanks for the correction. I looked over the cast list and don't know why I made the mistake with Eno.

I'll make this short and sweet; the editiing in this film really ruins its credibility. There are are a ton of awkward cuts during the interviews. The cuts become so frequent that you're not sure exactly who or what the artist is talking about or referring to. The first time I watched this movie, the edititng didn't bother me so much, but upon the second view, the director's bias towards certain musicians was clearly demonstrated through the copying and pasting of interview clips.

just because it is an indie film doesn't make it profound or even good. I probably could have made this movie in my highschool intro to film class.