Quadrophenia

(potential spoilers)

Jimmy Cooper, frustrated with bourgeoisie normality weeks after an electrifying, life-changing holiday weekend away, needs a release. He downs amphetamines and slam dances to ska, but that's only part of the Mod lifestyle in 1960s Great Britain. Mods also like to ride Vespa and Lambretta scooters and dress quite fashionably. They are the counterpoint to the Rockers, leather jacket-clad regular joes who would rather tear up the asphalt with Harleys and listen to Elvis. Presley, that is. So Jimmy eventually returns to Brighton, the scene of a massive scuffle between the Mods and Rockers. The weekend had been filled with violence, color, energy. Life was teeming. There seemed to be some purpose. He could finally breathe. Then the police flew in and retrieved order. The law won. In more ways than one, Jimmy will discover. 

Before he joined in the fracas, he had ducked into an alleyway with this girl he fancied. He had had perhaps his first intimate encounter there. Filled with potent memories, he finds the town distressingly still now. Rather than energy, he finds ennui. Tourists everywhere. Tranquility, fer fook's sake! Even worse, he finds that alleyway, now indelibly marked with sadness, since his crush has since taken up with one of his mates. The rush of excitement, dead and gone. He tortures himself, lingering there far too long, the scene itself perhaps defining the rest of his life if he lets it. Everyone has such a location, a place we acknowledge either with a shake of the head, tears, or perhaps we're still there, doomed to be haunted by its memories. 

Director Franc Roddam's blistering 1979 QUADROPHENIA, a stylish, loose adaptation of The Who's 1973 rock opera, if nothing else, understands with great urgency what it is that leads to Realization. Metamorphosis. Have you ever stood at an impasse in your life, a fork at which your must make a decision? Of course you have. Sometimes, it is very clear that whichever path you choose to take may well determine your fate. You can choose to cling to an illusion, or grow, even if "growing" actually means compromising some of those fist-pumping ideals you held so tightly. Does education come easily? 

Jimmy (Phil Daniels) is our angry young man, careful in dress, worshipping footballer Pete Best and American R & B alike. He thrives on shoving the Establishment's tenets right back at them. He's like a lot of youths have been. But he reaches a valley, a place so low it seems pitching off a cliff on one of those scooters is the only answer. A place at which he arrived when discovering one of his Mod heroes, Ace (Sting, in an early role), the apparent leader of it all, is not only working for the Man, but is also just a lowly........ .....BELLLLLLLLLLLLL-BOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!........ It's a great moment, a moment of crushingly clarity. A stone cold sober reminder of the dangers of worshipping the wrong people and ideals. How to respond? Does Jimmy really want to join the famous club of those before him, those who leapt from Beachy Head, the site of multiple suicides? The opening scene may answer that question. 

The music of the Who is so thunderously powerful, even if this film had failed dramatically, it still would've hit hard and where it stings (no pun intended). Roddam has fashioned such a thoughtful, kinetic cinematic exercise from beginning to end, we're just numbed. The plot is totally recycled 50s rebel greaser fodder, but the themes of lost youth and cleansing by fire are so relevent, they smolder. This was the second Who album to be filmed, after Ken Russell's outlandish 1975 TOMMY. Roddam does not create the garish smorgasbord of eccentricity that Russell did. He opts for a serious, clear-eyed examination of alienation and restlessness. Such a restlessness can drive us in any direction. Anywhere, Who songwriter Pete Townshend first argued, as long as it isn't at that fork.