If there’s one thing you can trust Hollywood to do, it’s get rock stars all wrong. From the boilerplate cornpone of Jailhouse Rock to the ecstatic camp of The Doors to the antibacterial sentimentality of Almost Famous and beyond, movies about rock musicians have ever been a repository of their creators’ projections about rock ’n’ roll mythos, or a means of preserving hoary old tropes about hedonism, persona, compromise, and always, always, always redemption. In many cases, the films are satisfying anyway, thanks to the skillful deployment of good songs, deft editing, and the magnetic performers. (Purple Rain is a generic melodrama motorized by unflinching misogyny—not just in the internet outrage sense—and narrative cliché; it’s also stirring, thrilling, dazzling, indelible, because it’s Prince in 1984. All other bets are off.) Pop music and narrative cinema are ideally suited to each other, because both are cheap, commercial art forms that regularly transcend their low birth to achieve the highest, most sublime expression available. In some kinds of love, as Lou Reed reminds us, the possibilities are endless…
