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“I’ve just been fishing with Salvador Dali. He used a dotted line. . . caught every other fish.”
DIRECTED BY: Jack Bond
FEATURING: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe
PLOT: From West End towns with dead end walls, the Pet Shop Boys travel around England before ending up at King’s Cross; all the while, singer Neil Tennant recalls his childhood memories in a narrative postcard to his mother.
COMMENTS: By 1987 the Pet Shop Boys had produced two hit albums with a number of chart-topping singles but they still couldn’t afford the expense of touring. When a planned concert fell through, their manager suggested they make a film, something like The Beatles did with A Hard Day’s Night. Director Jack Bond, whose prior credits included the documentary Dali in New York (1965) and a series of experimental films with Jane Arden, proved integral to the project. Structured as a road movie, Bond turns the film into a Surrealist game of free association. Though punctuated by popular songs, It Couldn’t Happen Here sank into obscurity after being panned by film critics.
Anyone expecting this to be a typical band film must have been surprised by a movie that’s anything but. It lacks concert footage and behind-the-scenes interviews; instead, the Boys meander through a series of vignettes. Lyrics suddenly crop up in the dialogue as spoken word poetry or snippets on the radio. Fans of Tennant’s literate compositions, in which love, romance, and commerce all intertwine, will instantly recognize them. To anyone less familiar with the music, the isolated refrains make the film even more enigmatic.
The road trip begins at the seashore. Tennant stops by a souvenir stand to purchase bawdy holiday postcards. He reminisces about his family nearly being kicked out of a boarding house due to his bad behavior. The scene then cuts to Chris Lowe, narrowly escaping the same overbearing landlady after he throws his breakfast in her face. “Chrissy, baby,” she moans, “what have I done to deserve this?”
The present day continually blends with the past as Lowe joins Tennant at the seaside and a blind priest chases two schoolboys through a carnival. After Tennant recalls how his father once spent their family’s savings on a blue and cream-colored Ford Zephyr, the priest then reappears as a hitchhiking serial killer. While Lowe drives and Tennant lip-syncs to himself on the radio, the hitchhiker gleefully recounts his murderous exploits with Salvador Dalí as they continue their journey across the country.
A pitstop at a diner stars a ventriloquist’s dummy who rants about the nature of time, sparking an existential crisis in a pilot seated nearby. A plane and car-chase scene, reminiscent of North by Northwest, ends in front of a phone booth being vandalized by Neo-Nazis, who politely cease in their destruction so Tennant can call the landlady.
And so it goes, passing from one bizarre set-piece to another, the proceedings occasionally interrupted by MTV-style dance breaks. Tennant and Lowe retain deadpan expressions throughout, observing everything from a man on fire and zebra keepers with black-and-white striped faces with incurious nonchalance.
Re-considering It Couldn’t Happen Here, some commentators are kinder to it in hindsight, uncovering clever political critique lurking beneath the odd sensibility. Others are not so nice, declaring it a misguided foray best left forgotten. Dedicated fans of the Pet Shop Boys should seize opportunities to check it out on physical media or streaming; there’s a certain nostalgia to hearing the group’s hits again in this context. For others, it’s an interesting, if not entirely successful, attempt at making a film according to Surrealist principles; at least, that’s my impression.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Chris R.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
