Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006) User Reviews

Good film

[seawalker · 8/10 · 9 July 2007]

There is a great bit in "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" in which self confessed Scott Walker obsessive/fan Marc Almond talks about his reaction to hearing "Tilt" for the first time.

Marc explains that he was invited to an exclusive play of what was, at that time, the new album. He took his seat, with many other people, in reverential silence and then the event began. After listening to a couple of tracks, Marc turned to his friend and said

"This is terrible. This a really bad record. How embarrassing is this?"

(OK. For anybody who knows the film off by heart, and I'm sure that there will be a few, those are perhaps not the exact words that Marc Almond used, but I think I am pretty close.)

It was a great scene. A crucial scene, in fact, because prior to that we had been treated to a veritable galaxy of famous talking heads rhapsodising over Scott Walker's genius, his innovativeness, the depth and scope of his recordings and his progression away from anything resembling traditional pop music to something more akin to avant guard or even performance art. The pop singer Lulu kept it simple. She just wanted to know if Scott was still "gorgeous". Fair enough, I thought. (She toured with him in the Sixties when he was in the Walker Brothers.)

From the snippets of music in the film, and they were only snippets, I am not at all sure if I like Scott Walker's later music or not. I might... because it is like nothing you will ever hear, and I quite like the idea of that.

Therein lies the mystery of Scott Walker. His current work is impossible to pigeonhole and you cannot assume that you will like his current work based on his past work, because it is so completely different. I did like the Walker Brothers singles. I did like those early great, soaring, orchestrated solo records, some of which Julian Cope dismisses in the film as "M.O.R slop". Above all Scott Walker was, and still is, a brilliant vocalist.

But about the film...

This is a really good documentary. It's the full story from jobbing bass player on the Sunset Strip, teeny bop stardom with the Walker Brothers, solo success, solo and critical confusion, solo failure and extreme solo experimentation. There are lots and lots of clips, and some rare archive interview footage including Scott on mid 80's yoof show "The Tube", which is kind of hilarious in itself because of the dreadful video clip that was made to promote the single he had out at that time. (No idea what that was called.) Current interview footage shows Scott as shy, self effacing and (shock horror!) kind of normal. He also laughs a lot when recording, which was a bit of a surprise.

Good film.

Interestingly enough, the ear worm working away at my brain when I left the cinema was "Make It Easy On Yourself". Hell, there's nothing like a good pop tune. Maybe the most radical thing Scott could do now would be to record a pop album. Now that would be shocking...

An in-depth, absorbing documentary offering insights into the music genius that Scott Walker solidly is

[ruby_fff · 8/10 · 9 March 2010]

More than five years in the making, filmmaker Stephen Kijak gave us a chance to spend some time with Scott Walker, or Noel Scott Engel (his real name if you prefer), and listen to other collaborators and musicians who have been touched by Scott, talking and commenting while listening to selections of Scott's music presented during interviews. Scott, the consummate and committed songwriter-poet-explorer of the 'un-tread' territories of the senses, intrepidly transforms his internal imagery and inherent clues into his unique music, 'avant-garde' or otherwise (as demonstrated in his albums "TILT" 1995 Fontana Records UK, and "THE DRIFT" 2006 4AD label).

From the beginning of the reel, we can tell he's a soft-spoken man, an ordinary looking man (regular guy) now in his sixties (he was quite a heart-throb, in his curly pop hairdo and husky low tone with his guitar, being the lead singer of the famed Walker Brothers circa 1964-66). He's not flashy or arrogant (as you might think pop culture idols would be), actually he's downright shy, sort of hiding away under his baseball cap. Once you hear him speak, passionately about his music, offering amusing anecdotes of 'yesteryears', you will be absorbed into this world of Scott Walker and wanting to know as much as you can about him, go checking on the Web for his music, album availability, even his song lyrics, without hesitation. (There's a substantial database of lyrics site at "scottlyrics.vniversum.com/".) Amazon.com seem to have a comprehensive source for all Scott Walker's albums, from Scott '1' (the Jacques Brel period), Scott 2, 3, 4, "Tilt" and "The Drift", including "Nite Flights" 1978 - the one-time reunited Walker Brothers album (MP3 album 'downloadable'), more Scott solo efforts like "Climate of Hunter" 1984, "Pola X" 1999 film soundtrack of nonconforming French director Leos Carax, "And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball?" 2007 orchestral piece in four movements by 4AD label.

He is, indeed, a 30 Century Man, a poetic purist at heart. His meticulous care in composing guitar chords for his songs as composer Hector Zazou pointed out as he wondered how Scott had in-tune and out-of-tune chord arrangements at the same time - true genius recognition, alright. Collaborating arranger & keyboard player Brian Gascoigne explained how Scott went for the unconventional - the in between 'chord' and 'dis-chord' and holding for 16 bars. It's amazing just 'soaking up' the many shared accounts described by Scott's fellow musicians, colleagues, and managers. "His lyrics are peerless," so Brian Eno admirably confirmed. David Bowie is executive producer to this documentary film of Scott Walker, who is definitely still alive and well, seriously flourishing in the music world in UK, where he's fondly appreciated more.

Considering most of the films and documentaries of the decade are about musicians past, like "Control" (2007) on Ian Curtis of Joy Division, "A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake" (2000), both died quite young at 24 and 26, Kijak's documentary "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" is invariably of a different tone, definitely worth your while especially if you appreciate music or film-making, as you'll get to enjoy sight and sound simultaneously (there are plenty of typographic visual play on the presentation of Scott's song lyrics through out the film). This is a gem well-cut. Enjoy the 95 minutes and you shall rewind to review, if it's certain segments to repeat, or simply the whole length of the feature once again.

Memorable quotes: It's fascinating hearing him talking about his songwriting that "it has to come to you, can't push it". And what a sensible man Scott Walker is as he said, "I'll know when I write my next record where I'll be".

Good

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 7/10 · 1 February 2013]

Film director Stephen Kijak's film is to be commended for never descending into minutia on Engel's life. In fact, virtually nothing, after the initial information on Engle's youth, is mentioned of his private life. This is refreshing, for it lifts the film well above any claims of being a vanity documentary. The negative is that Engel's 'art' is simply not good. Yes, he had a deep, powerful bass voice, and it was put to great effect in the early recordings. But, listening to his latest efforts, not only are his lyrics bad (Jim Morrison, Walker is not, even as some talking heads bizarrely link him to T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce)- in a jumbled sense, but they border on PC and the 'music,' such as it is, is random and found noise, not harmonies and melodies. To top it off, Engel's voice is a dim echo of its former glory, often descending into what seems like a parody of some local 1960s television station's late night horror film show host's attempt at singing to a bad B film.

Initially, the film plays out like a mockumentary, but the infusion of vintage television clips dashes that surmise. What is not dashed is the reality of how limited the 'art' of Engel's music. Great art does art well. Visionary art pushes boundaries, as well. But, to push the boundaries back, the artist has to stay anchored to the extremes, at least of the art form. In the case of music, this means non-banal lyrics, damning predictable percussion, varying melodies and other such extensions. Simply going off into a corner and wailing, or grunting, is not an extension of music nor singing, as arts. Of course, that is hyperbole, but Walker's latest efforts smack of a phenomenon known in the arts- that of the spent artist realizing he'll never duplicate his earlier successes, so he just preens and deranges, then hides behind the veneer of his earlier success, as a 'genius,' or the like (and it's no shock to know Engel worships the Beatniks). Engel simply never expands the boundaries of music- pop nor otherwise, even as talking heads damn many of the progressive rock acts of the 1970s that went far beyond Walker's experimentalism: Yes, King Crimson, and others.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (the title taken from an Engel song) is a well wrought and exquisitely structured film on an ultimately interesting subject, but that subject is not Engel nor music nor art, but the peregrinations of the spent artist in search of that golden nipple needed to nurse him into senescence's uneasy drool. Now, if only director Kijack can find an artist and subject worthy of his talents, the film will be a landmark in the genre.

Brilliant Music Doc

[julio_bonet · 10/10 · 17 October 2007]

I had no idea who Mr. Scott Walker was until I came across this incredible and honest portrayal of the most enigmatic musician ever. The fact that he has inspired the numerous (and eclectic selection) artists that contribute to this doc represents the power of his musical genius. I highly recommend everyone checks out this doc; you'll leave the theatre/your TV screen, anxious to collect and absorb all his albums.

Kijak presents himself as an incredible interviewer and director just as much as Walker actually proves to be quite open to allowing the cameras into his world.

Moving, unforgettable, and unique. A MUST-SEE!

A Very Good Film About an Extraordinary Musician

[malkotozlo · 10/10 · 5 August 2008]

Scott Walker, one of the most talented, exciting and exceptional figures in the history of music, has been avoiding the attention of the media for ages. This film does not provide you with the much sought after information about his personal life (which I would have found very interesting, I admit), but instead focuses on his music, which, of course, is much more important. There are a lot of talking heads, mostly famous musicians and people from the music business, listening to Scott Walker's music and describing their impressions and the significance it has for them. Naturally, the most fascinating thing about the movie is Scott Walker himself and the metamorphoses he went through in the course of his musical career, drifting more and more in dark and abstract directions. I would highly recommend the film to anyone who likes Scott Walker (if you do not know who he is, hear some of his music, preferably beginning with the 60s).

A musical mystery man revealed

[Chris Knipp · 9/10 · 29 January 2009]

Scott Walker is an American composer and poet (original name Noel Scott Engel) who has lived in England for many years. Originally he was a handsome Sixties pop star who sang with the group The Walker Brothers in a "warm, sepulchral baritone" (as Eddie Cockrell puts it in 'Variety') that made young girls scream and, in England, was more popular than the Beatles. After a couple of albums the group disbanded (though reuniting for a while in the Seventies), and Scott went solo. Gradually over many years, moving haltingly at first from covers of other people's songs to increasingly complex and personal compositions in albums a decade apart, Walker has established a reputation as a unique musical figure focused on recording, not public performance, which the screaming girls taught him to hate. His haunting, surreal, emotionally demanding pieces, all the way back to the Sixties, have influenced Radiohead and The Cocteau Twins. Vocally admired by Sting, Brian Eno, and David Bowie (executive producer here), he receives on screen testimonials from Ute Lemper, Jarvis Cocker, Lulu, Marc Almond, Damon Albarn, Allison Goldfrapp, and Gavin Friday.

Kijak's film is interesting enough to attract new converts to this cult artist. It's also a pleasure to watch because it's so well made. It's convincing, elegant, revealing, seamless, and frequently quite beautiful.

The film begins by teasing viewers with the historically reclusive nature of the man ever since he gave up public performance some time in the Seventies. Then it springs its bombshell: Scott has consented to a lengthy interview for the film. '30 Century Man' is not so much a life as a life-in-art. We learn little about personal matters such as depression and a drinking problem but everything about his style and imagination and the stories of the individual albums. The beauty of the film is as a portrait of musical evolution describing changing ensembles, recording methods, and moods from album to album, the latest many years apart. It's also the story of an artist influencing other artists, rather than prancing before the public.

Before we get to that, there's enough footage of TV performances to show that The Walker Brothers (who were neither brothers nor named Walker) were a conventional cute singing package. M.O.R. slop, you might say, especially considering their peak year of 1965 was the time when Dylan released 'Highway 61 Revisited.' On his own, Scott wanted to do Jacques Brel, the angst-ridden, sweaty French songwriter. He did Brel smoothly, in English, with that mellifluous baritone of his.

Later when the solo compositions emerge, he moves further and further toward art compositions with horror-show moodiness and highly crafted sound landscapes. The latest songs some say are not songs at all but something else, haunting tone poems with words born, Scott says, out of a life of bad dreams. Some of the images used to illustrate later compositions, however, still put one in a Seventies mood, though the dreamy floating patterns, colors, and texts have nothing dated about them. Maybe even the mature Scott Walker style grows out of a strain of Seventies English rock impressionism. (That may partly explain Walker's remaining in the UK, but he was also in love with Europe through its films.) The lyrics, often floated dreamily on screen with lines in space, are occasionally quite strange.

One suave passage traces key songs from all Walker's albums through time to show he did interesting work even early in his solo career. While the music is playing multiple screens show musicians listening and commenting on the work.

Though the film doesn't say so, Walker's lyrics from the Eighties on, when the albums became less frequent, are stronger and freer.

'Cripple fingers hit the muezzin yells/some had Columbine some had specks/Cripple fingers hit the rounds of shells/some had clinging vine some had specks

The good news you cannot refuse/The bad news is there is no news' ('Patriot,' a single, 1995)

Excerpts we hear (and partly see) show Walker is adventurous and extravagant (but a deft and calmly focused director) in studio orchestrations, using lots of strings and building a large wooden box to get just the right percussion sound. Another time a percussionist must hit a large slab of meat. Doing the music for Leos Carax's film 'Pola X,' he has a large studio full of loud percussionists. Classical musicians are instructed to play violins to imitate the sound of German planes coming in to bomb English towns--not an easy day's work. It's all very intriguing, suggesting a personal musical world that's scary, but still welcomes you to come in.

The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore

[valis1949 · 9/10 · 3 July 2009]

SCOTT WALKER 30 CENTURY MAN investigates the career of one of the most enigmatic musical icons of the last hundred years. Noel Scott Engel started his musical career as part of an American 'Mop Top' band which broke big in England, yet pretty much was ignored elsewhere. At one point, The Walker Brothers English fan base was larger than that of The Beatles. As the band's popularity waned, Scott became a solo artist, and seemed to channel his approach to popular music through the Social Realism Movement popularized by the works of English film director, Ken Loach, playwright, John Osborne, and even, Tennessee Williams. His sound is truly distinctive and extraordinary, and manages to straddle the line between Pop and Avant Garde. Yet, his musical influence is far-ranging, and can be heard in the work of such diverse contemporary artists as Brian Eno, David Bowie, Radiohead, Morrissey, Julian Cope, and dozens more. Throughout the documentary, Walker is very open and forthright about his music, but almost nothing is mentioned about his personal life. Obviously, this was his intention, yet the film left me wondering what the last forty years has been like for this idiosyncratic figure.

Visionary!

[Ingrid-13 · 14 October 2007]

I have been a fan of Scott Walker's work since I was a girl and have continued to follow his work, following all the strange twists and turns his career went on and I have been following this film carefully since I heard it was being made and when I finally saw it I was mesmerized. Scott is so present in the film and the music is given the priority, not his personal life. I think it's a real achievement to get someone like Scott to open up and the film seemed so intimate without dispelling any of the great mystery that swirls around him, which is part of his mystique, it's part of why we love him, in addition to his amazing voice and music! I happen to like a lot of the artists in the film and thought their impressions of his music were touching, honest and sometimes funny and insightful...but they never detract, and Scott is really the center of gravity in a film that presents his music in such a visually stunning way, I can't imagine anyone not falling under its spell. I recommend it for any fan of Scott Walker's music and any fan of music at all, he's one of the greats that needs to be fully recognized the world over, and I think this film will help that happen.

Documentary in Search of a Theme

[ifyougnufilms · 3/10 · 22 August 2012]

I can understand why a previous reviewer mistook this at first for a mockumentary. It is jargon-loaded, trivia-burdened, and at times downright (unintentionally) comic-pompous. Walker had a fine mellow voice for ballad singing and expressed some originality in a very few later songs, but aside from this?

Why drag in everyone who knew him and/or once grooved on his music and lyrics so they can be mugshot while straining to convince us he's some kind of unsung (pun intended)phenom all of us should recognize and appreciate? If this was the intended theme and purpose of the film, it is an utter failure, suggesting the mystery of Scott Walker's life is that there is no mystery.

If the film makers are trying to make some other point (as is achieved in better music bio films), it's not clear what that might be. It doesn't help that some of his incomprehensible pseudo-poetic lyrics are scrolled in the background.

Several of the commentators are as embarrassingly inarticulate as Walker's own more "advanced" lyrics are. (Are we sure this isn't a mock-umentary?) Where was the director/editor in all this rambling? Off somewhere grooving on Walker's earlier recordings?

Interestingly, the most intelligent comment comes briefly from Sting when he begins to talk about the dark side of romanticism, etc. It's a shame he (or somebody) wasn't given more time to explore the significance of Walker's life. Scott Walker was not one of the greatest musical/poetry talents of the last forty years, but surely he deserves better than this inept bio-film.

A Glimpse at a Truly Effective Artist

[brother_jude · 9/10 · 4 March 2009]

When one of my musical heroes, Julian Cope, mentioned Scott Walker as one of his big influences, I had to listen for myself. I found the "Scott 2" CD by chance in a cutout bin and have been hooked ever since. The arrangements, lyrics, emotional punch and sheer weirdness of songs like "Plastic Palace People" and "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" are impossible to get out of your mind once you've heard them. And then there's Walker's baritone voice. I can't think of anyone else singing these kind of songs and not making them sound ridiculous or pretentious. I've since acquired more of his solo work and have found it, by turns, equally fantastic and puzzling. This film does a good job of showing the arc of how he went from pop crooner to enigmatic experimentalist. I was pleasantly surprised when Walker took off the baseball cap and began to take us through his musical history. I had been afraid of him being cold and distant, given his disdain for publicity. Instead he seems to be a decent enough fellow, who just happens to possess a talent for displaying his inner demons effectively. While watching, I began to realize that the intent of his work has not changed over the years, it has merely become starker in conveying Walker's dark, though human, vision. In showing the recording process (one musician punching rhythms on a slab of meat) and hearing him explain the inspiration of certain songs (like the chilling footage from post-fascist Italy), the film gave me more insight, and respect, for Walker's later works like "Tilt" and "The Drift." If anyone wants a glimpse into a TRULY creative mind, whether a fan of Walker's music or not, I recommend they see this film.

The Mysterious Scott

[wavecat13 · 8/10 · 27 April 2020]

A good documentary about the mysterious and much admired Scott Walker. It gives you a look at the man (who seems nice, obsessive, sophisticated, and possibly gay) and the music (which was/is unique).

Strange Feeling...

[Larry_C_Ellis · 4/10 · 18 April 2011]

Watching this movie created a strange feeling in me.

For quite a few minutes into this film, I though it to be a mockumentary in the style of "This is Spinal Tap". A teenager (in a band) in the late sixties, I thought I new quite a bit about the music of the time.

Yet, in spite of the film's obsessing of Walker's work and its impact, I had no recollection of him whatsoever. I thought the film was a joke.

Only when the story began to weave in interviews from people I knew did I begin to think this might be a factual story. Then, when I heard "The Sun Aing't Gonna Shine Anymore", I recognized a hit I had heard (my after-the-fact research shows that the Walker Brothers had only two top 40 hits: this one, which reached #13, and an earlier one "Make It Easy On Yourself" which reached #16 in 1965 and 1966).

So I became convinced Walker was real--for a while. As I listened to some of Walker's stranger efforts I again thought the film might be a put-on. The two hits I mentioned? I began to think they were done by another group (or even Engelbert Humperdinck, whose voice is similar to Walker's).

In the end, though, Walker is very real. As to rather the film is a put-on, you'll have to see it and make up your own mind. Some of Walker's music is very interesting (the spacey, avant garde stuff is unusual and unlike anything I've heard). Some is just nice, soothing pop (the two hits). Most of it does not stand the test of time well.

So there's the rub, the reason I rate this film only 4 stars, and the reason the film is not as enjoyable as it might have been. The producers' intentions are vague and the true spirit of the film is impossible to discern for certain.

At the outset, had they mentioned the subject of the film was very real (even though we might not have heard of Scott Walker) and put the film in context, things might have been different. Instead, they seemed to assume we'd all know him, admire his work and think of him as an icon. We don't know whether they're making fun of Walker, of us, or both.

Perhaps things are different in the UK, but in America, Mr. Walker is not an icon, even though perhaps it could have turned out otherwise.