Sometimes you see a musical so jaw-dropping that you wish you could take Ken Mandelbaum to see it.
Unable to bring myself to watch the much-discussed retooling of whatever exactly The Idol was (release The Seimetz Cut), I only really know the cinematic Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye from the part in Uncut Gems where he plays himself. But honestly, the whole thing that brought me onboard the Weeknd milieu was 2015’s “The Hills” and its album Beauty Behind The Madness, because it was a perfect synthesis of sound and syntax- at that time, a decade ago, Tesfaye was the Bret Easton Ellis of R&B, and that was cool.
Things have shifted a bit since then, with the intervening Starboy era, a wry turn on American Dad!, and the “Young Turks” homage “Blinding Lights.” And in this transitional space as an artist, and in partnership with filmmaker Trey Edward Shults (who made the masterpiece Krisha and a bunch of other, frustrating films- seriously, someone needs to take his aspect ratios away until he learns that a flourish ungrounded in artistic philosophy is meaningless), we’re given Hurry Up Tomorrow, a sleek scream of the soul that aims for Pink Floyd The Wall, Misery, and Deconstructing Harry but more often than not wallows in elegantly stage-managed mess and meticulous explorations of the Isn’t It A Shame About Crazy Women Who Won’t Understand Me No Matter How Hard I Try subgenre.
Quite seriously, this feels way too rooted in visceral paranoia and anxiety not to be exorcising some real shit, but despite a late third act moment that is genuinely moving and evocative (perhaps because it benefits from the contrast of the recursive saywhutnow of the rest of the film), what you take away from Hurry Up Tomorrow is a sincere concern that it’s going to someday be used as evidence in divorce proceedings.
Playing a fictionalized version of himself, Tesfaye commits to the drama of the situation. There is no winking at the camera, or ironic distance. Styled in a way that calls to mind Barton Fink (character and film), there’s a lot going on, and regardless of how this film hits you, there is something very appealing about being able to have an emotional exorcism on this kind of high-end production-designed scale. Who wouldn’t want to craft something like this with costars like Jenna Ortega (giving 1986 Jennifer Beals in the best possible way) and Barry Keoghan (hypersymbolic and staggeringly underwritten) and then invite your therapist to the premiere? [NOTE: I don’t know if that’s exactly how it went down, but you don’t make a film like this and then not get your therapist to watch it.]
I’d read a lot of the advance word on this, mostly negative in tone, and bought my ticket because you don’t want to pass up the chance to see something that has that kind of impact on the discourse. It’s not a disaster, and nothing about it is accidental- this is absolutely the film that all involved parties wanted to make. It’s sometimes fascinating, sometimes enervating, and absolutely something to behold in a mall multiplex. And despite what some reviews would have you believe, this is not The Weeknd’s Under The Cherry Moon*. It’s his 3 Chains O’ Gold, but using The Sacrifice of Victor as its foundation**.
* Under The Cherry Moon is a zippy delight, and absolutely worth a watch.
** The Seimetz Cut of The Idol and Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour Prince doc are the two things I want to see more than anything else.
