Review: Movie full of indie musician cameos

Written by Kara Kiehle
(kkiehle@mscd.edu)

Scott Walker’s vocal chords strangle the wind like a sob, or a ghost moving across the attic floorboards above your head at night. David Bowie’s most tragic demon howling, and Brian Eno’s most abstract, alien soundscapes, are echoes of Walker, the subject of Stephen Kijak’s 2006 documentary “Scott Walker: 30th Century Man.”

The late ’60s was the dawn of a socially weird and liberating era that gave birth to a variety of disparate music sub-genres. It also marked the beginning of a 40-year course Walker spent struggling against the current of mainstream tendencies.

From his days as the eccentric, rogue vocalist/bassist of American boy-band trio The Walker Brothers — whose canned, sedative AM strains were fervently embraced by England as Beatlemania raged stateside — to his solo works of extreme sonic expressionism, “30th Century Man” describes this fascinating, epic journey that led to Walker’s most recent albums, Tilt and Drift.

The movie includes anecdotal interviews from Bowie, who also has a producer credit in the documentary, Eno and other musicians Walker worked with and inspired, such as Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Alison Goldfrapp, Marc Almond of Soft Cell, and Johnny Marr of The Smiths. The interviews frame rare autobiographical musings from Walker himself. Like every artist should when discussing his work, he manages to maintain his Kafkaesque inscrutability.

The film capitalizes on Walker’s well-known eccentricities. He’s used fists beating on a raw slab of pork as percussion, screaming donkeys as sound effects and sung about S&M, CIA torture, Elvis’ stillborn twin, cockfighting and the Greek god of music and mysticism, Orpheus. He has covered Belgian cabaret songs, spent time in a monastery studying Gregorian chant, described his roots as “beatnik,” and drawn aesthetic inspiration from the moody, atmospheric films of Bergman and Kurosawa. Interviewees attempt to deconstruct the structure of Walker’s sound — how he buries melodies in discord to unsettling effect — and uses nonrepresentational lyrics as his mode of storytelling.

“Scott Walker: 30th Century Man” is a postmodern portrait. It invites you to penetrate the aura of the tortured genius and the mystery of his methods. Specialized biopics like this one are typically only seen by fans, and devotees will not be disappointed. But for the uninitiated wanting to broaden their musical horizons, 30th Century Man just might convert you.