Jim Jarmusch’s film strikes a fine balance between a serious and comprehensive appraisal of The Stooges’ career.
Gimme Danger is the second film by Jim Jarmusch to be premiering at this year’s Cannes festival, and it’s a different beast entirely: an affectionate, loud, and thoroughly entertaining tribute to The Stooges and their universal, ever-lasting dirty, gutter-glam influence.
From their ambitious Michigan beginnings to their ironic Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction, Jarmusch passionately details the legendary band. With frontman Iggy Pop’s distinctive voice infusing the film from beginning to end, Gimme Danger reveals the band’s tumultuous birth in late 60s Detroit, their flirtation with stardom in the early 70s, their battles with critical and record company indifference and their descent into a drug-fuelled chaos and eventual implosion.
It’s true, much of this story has been documented before, but one way or the other Jarmusch manages to make it his own. Given the director’s close relationship to the subject at hand, the film strikes a fine balance between a serious and comprehensive appraisal of the band’s career and a somewhat bizarre and original representation of the their image and attitude. And while a lot of the focus is, of course, on the living legend that is Iggy Pop, Gimme Danger also shines considerable light on to the other founding members Scott and Ron Asheton, original bassist Dave Alexander and later guitarist James Williamson.
Witty, loving and fuelled by some of the finest rock n’ roll music, Gimme Danger is unashamedly nostalgic, yet it also makes you leave the cinema with a lump in your throat that there’s just no one quite like the young Iggy in music anymore. At least not for now.
Pamela Jahn
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