“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”
I had the privilege to view this relic from the year 2000 this weekend, at my friends’ requests as much as to my own curiosity. I’ve never been one to ADORE a Cusack film but I certainly don’t hate him. And as you might have guessed by this point, I’m a music nut otherwise I wouldn’t be frantically trying to keep up with this blog for you readers. So naturally, when this film is touted as “the perfect film for you Mike…” It seemed like this was as good a time as any to see it.
All that being said, this film was an experience.
I’d like to say its required viewing for the human race, but I doubt that will catch on.
However, for about 113 minutes, I was watching my own life unfold on screen in the form of Rob Gordon’s tale of love found and lost with serious music dissection in the process. There have been a great deal of movies that have shocked and awed me in terms of story telling and trailblazing ideas of film making. However, never has a film felt so familiar. Usually when I equate with characters, it’s an extreme of them that I isolate and latch onto. Here, in High Fidelity, Gordon practically a breathes like I breathe for the film’s entire running time and it’s oddly voyeuristic.
Gordon is an eccentric record store owner, newly single, and questioning his life and that whole “broader spectrum of being” thing. The kicker is that now he revisits his “Top 5 Break Ups of All Time,” launching him into a quest of self-discovery as to why his life is horrible. Here’s the interesting thing about Gordon though, this is all exists in the larger universe about music. His life, the life of his co-workers, they all exist in harmony with this concept of music. If you are still reading, you’ll be expecting a point so, here it is.
Music is sacred in the film of High Fidelity because of how it enables Gordon (and to a lesser extent his co-workers) to make sense of chaos. Gordon constructs “Top 5 Lists” about everything and anything because it allows him to makes sense of his fears. He creates mix tapes that are more than songs. These tapes are trials, tribulations, moods, memories, stories, etc. They have their place much like a photo album or an old piece of clothing might hold for a sane person.
In this world, Gordon and his cohorts make meaning through and with music.
Nothing else that I’ve ever experienced has had this world view, my world view. This film is my life, my anxieties. Maybe I’ll never own a record shop, or sleep with as many women as Gordon does (because I’m definitely NOT John Cusack in the looks dept.), but I’ll have his same fears and coping mechanisms. I’ll have long tirades about deleted Smiths singles and where Green Day had their sound rooted in. Yet, my personal life will always be hanging on by a thread despite the minutia of it and the events that construct it. I’ll create CD mixes that punch you in the face, but don’t blow their wad in the first four songs because they mean much more than just being a collection of songs.
And yes, there will always be a Ian Raymond (think of him as to Yin to Gordon's Yang) in my life. It’ll be that one thing that fucks me over in the short term with its awful pony tail and cheap sunglasses. Yet through all of that, I’ll have music to make sense of it. Rather than breaking the forth wall and taking to audiences, I have this blog.
Rather than just having all this misery, I’ll have some music for a kickass soundtrack.
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