Returning to its home at Picturehouse Central after the pandemic rendered last year's festival a virtual only affair, Sundance London took place last weekend with some of the highlights from January's Park City iteration. Chief among them was the opening night film, Edgar Wright's debut documentary about Ron and Russell Mael - aka musical dynamos Sparks - the aptly named The Sparks Brothers.
Around in various forms since the late '60s, The Sparks Brothers follows the career of the Maels, going from album to album and one outrageous musical statement to the next, using interviews from a seemingly never-ending parade of celebrities and musicians who tell us the impact their music had on them. Chief among the contributors are the Maels themselves, offering an introduction and commentary to their long and storied career for those audience members drawn in by the lure of Edgar Wright. Truth be told, I count myself among that crowd, as outside of This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us, I wasn't hugely familiar with the Sparks' ouvre. But Edgar Wright is a director who's built up a loyal following who will trust in his artistic and musical taste, so The Sparks Brothers comes with a certain level of intrigue into why he chose this band to be the focus of his first non-fiction film.
It doesn't take long to see this is the perfect fit for director and subject, with a shared sense of madcap creativity between Wright and the Maels, and Edgar's distinctive laugh often audible off screen during Ron and Russell's pieces to camera showing that there's a close bond between them. It's fair to say that the Maels have the ability to be aloof and distant in a traditional interview setting, but there's a barrier that's been broken down that gives a real peppy energy to their interviews, with Wright matching and indulging in their flights of fancy (using props, gags and short snippets of animation) to keep the interview process alive.
Wright has pulled together a huge array of talking heads, and appropriately for an American band who always felt more English in their artistic sensibilities, they come from both sides of the pond. Sure, it's great to hear the opinions of Flea and Beck, but equally fitting to see Jonathan Ross and Dr Buckles himself, Adam Buxton, gush about their love for the band. Even ex-band members from decades past pop up to gush about the artistic triumph that is Sparks, just happy to have been involved in what has become the Mael Brothers' life's work. Topics such as their personal lives are largely ignored or side-stepped (when asked their sexual preference, Ron's answer is "horny"), except for The Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin admitting to a brief fling with Russell, although she now regrets not directing her affections towards the more mysterious Ron. To this end, The Sparks Brothers manages to contain vast amounts of fanboy details whilst maintaining a lot of the mystery around the brothers' lives. It's to its credit that it doesn't feel like it's missing anything crucial.
More than anything, Ron and Russell are great company, and it's hard through the many music videos and TV performances on shows like Top of the Pops not to get a small thrill every time when the exceedingly odd but utterly brilliant Ron, complete with his infamous moustache, finds the camera pointed at him and stares directly down the lens with a strained smirk/smile on his face. A man hugely aware of how his image was perceived by their fans and the world at large (as described in the film, school kids thought Marc Bolan had joined a band with Hitler), Ron may be a musical genius, but also one of the most singularly unique pop stars to have ever existed.
Structurally, the film feels like it reaches a crescendo that it just about manages to sustain for its last ten minutes, although at 2 hours 20 it is definitely overlong with some diversions that could have been resigned to deleted scenes on what I expect will already be a jam packed home entertainment release. But, when a filmmaker is deep diving into a subject he loves and having such a great time doing it, it's easy to get swept up in the mayhem of the Maels and forgive Edgar for over-indulging. A loving tribute to a band you can easily take to your heart, if you weren't a fan of Sparks before, you will have been converted long before The Sparks Brothers reaches its end.
Verdict
5/5
The Sparks Brothers was the opening night film for this year's Sundance London, and is now also on general release.
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