The Music Never Stopped is about a father's struggles to reconnect with his son, who's unable to form new memories owing to a brain tumor. Sounds like movie-of-the-week fluff, but the movie is never manipulative. It's a terrific, old-school sentimental film that tears your heart out without stooping to clichés. In fact, it absolutely brilliant not only in spinning its main theme but in how it sets that father-son connection against a wholly accurate musical background. The music, that is, ain't there just to showcase a period.
We meet our leads right away. It's 1986, and father Henry (J.K. Simmons) and mother Helen (Cara Seymour) Sawyer have just discovered that their long-estranged son Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) is in a hospital, diagnosed with a large brain tumor. The tumor is operable and benign, but the doctor tells the stricken parents that Gabriel - whom they haven't seen in about twenty years - can no longer form new memories. What he does remember ends at about 1970.
After trying all sorts of medicines and other therapies, Henry finds an article written by a musical therapist, Dianne Daley (Julia Ormond); Daley tries to use music to bring Gabriel back to the present, as he still believes it's 1970 or so. And she quickly learns - no spoiler here - that although Gabriel is musically inclined, he reacts positively only to music from the late 1960s and thereabouts, especially that of the Grateful Dead.
Now, confession time. Those of you who know me well know that I am a Deadhead. Have been on the bus for a long time now. So I had high expectations for this movie, perhaps expectations that even differed from other viewers. And I can confidently say that the movie far exceeded those expectations.
Here's why. The movie doesn't just use the music as a prop to move the plot forward. Why does Gabriel react positively only to this music? What happened in 1970? We do find out, and it is very important. But the impetus for Gabriel's leaving home as a teenager is closely tied to the connection each of us feels with our own favorite music. Everyone has some song they love, the movie tells us, and when we hear that song we are taken back to a time and place that is unique to our memories. Others may hear the same song and are affected differently by it. In Gabriel's case, the songs from that era represent the last time he was truly all right. When his parents hear the same songs in 1986, their memories are colored by what they've experienced since then.
Gabriel is never depicted as a simple, brain-dead hippie. He's just some kid who's in a band, like so many long-haired youths were back then, emulating groups like The Beatles, the Stones, and yes, the Dead. Playing covers. Enjoying themselves, falling in love. Gabriel not only knows all of the current (for the time) bands, he knows the meanings behind songs such as Dylan's "Desolation Row." Gabriel, for a high-school kid, is a pretty deep thinker.
He shares his love of music with his father, who grew up with more staid orchestral arrangements - some Count Basie, some Bing Crosby, and so on. Completely different music, and yet each uses his favorite songs to relate to favorite memories.
Henry eventually does realize that the best way to communicate with his son is to learn every Grateful Dead song and then play the records for him when he visits Gabriel in his hospice-like home. Anything, you see, to try to get his son back to him.
It doesn't matter if you like the Dead's music. It really doesn't. As any tour veteran would tell you, the experience of a show is one you'll never get anywhere else. Often imitated, never duplicated. There's a lot going on, and event is a culture unto itself. In this movie, director Jim Kohlberg uses some of the songs and a (staged) concert in order to depict this experience, and truthfully it's as accurate as it could possibly be - well, for a movie that uses no authentic concert footage.
This is not a movie that will make you laugh very often. Gabriel gets off some bon mots, some of which are unintentional, what with the memory loss thing. Simmons gets great lines, too. But essentially, this is a sad movie that never wallows in melodrama, a feat that most movies simply can't pull off. The movie engages us with the characters, makes us love them and regard them as actual people.
But it's not all the doing of Kohlberg. Were the Oscars coming up, I could see Simmons garnering a nomination for Best Actor. It's easily the best work he's done, and he's been in scads of things. Those of you with HBO will recognize him from Oz; you might also remember him from Juno and the Spider-Man films. The man is a gifted supporting actor. Here, he turns in an astounding, honest, and brave performance that won't leave your tear ducts dry for very long. This isn't just a three-hankie movie, it's an entire gross of Kleenex boxes. But like I alluded earlier, it's also not a soap opera that simply toys with your emotions. It's sincere and real and just magnificent.
We meet our leads right away. It's 1986, and father Henry (J.K. Simmons) and mother Helen (Cara Seymour) Sawyer have just discovered that their long-estranged son Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) is in a hospital, diagnosed with a large brain tumor. The tumor is operable and benign, but the doctor tells the stricken parents that Gabriel - whom they haven't seen in about twenty years - can no longer form new memories. What he does remember ends at about 1970.
After trying all sorts of medicines and other therapies, Henry finds an article written by a musical therapist, Dianne Daley (Julia Ormond); Daley tries to use music to bring Gabriel back to the present, as he still believes it's 1970 or so. And she quickly learns - no spoiler here - that although Gabriel is musically inclined, he reacts positively only to music from the late 1960s and thereabouts, especially that of the Grateful Dead.
Now, confession time. Those of you who know me well know that I am a Deadhead. Have been on the bus for a long time now. So I had high expectations for this movie, perhaps expectations that even differed from other viewers. And I can confidently say that the movie far exceeded those expectations.
Here's why. The movie doesn't just use the music as a prop to move the plot forward. Why does Gabriel react positively only to this music? What happened in 1970? We do find out, and it is very important. But the impetus for Gabriel's leaving home as a teenager is closely tied to the connection each of us feels with our own favorite music. Everyone has some song they love, the movie tells us, and when we hear that song we are taken back to a time and place that is unique to our memories. Others may hear the same song and are affected differently by it. In Gabriel's case, the songs from that era represent the last time he was truly all right. When his parents hear the same songs in 1986, their memories are colored by what they've experienced since then.
Gabriel is never depicted as a simple, brain-dead hippie. He's just some kid who's in a band, like so many long-haired youths were back then, emulating groups like The Beatles, the Stones, and yes, the Dead. Playing covers. Enjoying themselves, falling in love. Gabriel not only knows all of the current (for the time) bands, he knows the meanings behind songs such as Dylan's "Desolation Row." Gabriel, for a high-school kid, is a pretty deep thinker.
He shares his love of music with his father, who grew up with more staid orchestral arrangements - some Count Basie, some Bing Crosby, and so on. Completely different music, and yet each uses his favorite songs to relate to favorite memories.
Henry eventually does realize that the best way to communicate with his son is to learn every Grateful Dead song and then play the records for him when he visits Gabriel in his hospice-like home. Anything, you see, to try to get his son back to him.
It doesn't matter if you like the Dead's music. It really doesn't. As any tour veteran would tell you, the experience of a show is one you'll never get anywhere else. Often imitated, never duplicated. There's a lot going on, and event is a culture unto itself. In this movie, director Jim Kohlberg uses some of the songs and a (staged) concert in order to depict this experience, and truthfully it's as accurate as it could possibly be - well, for a movie that uses no authentic concert footage.
This is not a movie that will make you laugh very often. Gabriel gets off some bon mots, some of which are unintentional, what with the memory loss thing. Simmons gets great lines, too. But essentially, this is a sad movie that never wallows in melodrama, a feat that most movies simply can't pull off. The movie engages us with the characters, makes us love them and regard them as actual people.
But it's not all the doing of Kohlberg. Were the Oscars coming up, I could see Simmons garnering a nomination for Best Actor. It's easily the best work he's done, and he's been in scads of things. Those of you with HBO will recognize him from Oz; you might also remember him from Juno and the Spider-Man films. The man is a gifted supporting actor. Here, he turns in an astounding, honest, and brave performance that won't leave your tear ducts dry for very long. This isn't just a three-hankie movie, it's an entire gross of Kleenex boxes. But like I alluded earlier, it's also not a soap opera that simply toys with your emotions. It's sincere and real and just magnificent.