This page was created out of necessity. Given all the numerous shrines and fanpages dedicated to the newest fly-by-night popstars and other cultural ephemera, there are, to my knowledge, no websites dedicated to the great British film director, Ken Russell.

Here is my attempt to fill that void.

Ken Russell: The Movies

A paradox becomes remarkably clear when looking at the whole of Ken Russell's work as a film director. No filmmaker has produced such a widely diverse canon stylistically or in subject matter. To pigeon hole Russell in terms of genre would be a great disservice to his career. He is director of musical biography, rock musical, cerebral science fiction, historical drama, campy horror film, and sexual satire. However, given this diversity, Russell is known by the causal moviegoer and film buff alike not simply for one genre of his filmmaking but for one element of his filmmaking: wildly excessive, ecstatic imagery addressing themes of sex, death, destruction, transformation, and religious transcendence. It are these scenes of highly seductive, hypnotic power that will always be associated with Russell. This website attempts to honor this popular fascination with the extreme elements of Russell's work but also attempts to counterbalance this tendency by providing a much fuller, in-depth account of the entirety of his work.

Russell once lamented in an interview over the fact that people always associate him with his scenes of excessive indulgence, yet he also intimated at why this was so--we are all voyeurs. We are voyeurs of the sublime, voyeurs of the taboo, voyeurs of the decadent and profane, and voyeurs of the utterly transcendent. It is Russell, by means of his inspired imagination, who created doorways to these often hidden realms, these marginal dreamscapes and horrorshows which are usually kept from view on the main stage of reality. And no one was better than Russell at realizing these portals on the silverscreen.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between Russell's fantasies and film criticism: the more self-indulgent and excessive the film, the more universally panned. When Russell was able to show restraint--"respect" for the viewing audience--did he receive highest adulation, "Women in Love" being the prime example. Criticism of Russell's films was never directly aimed at his scenes of fantasy in isolation. No reviewer ever doubted Russell's genius for creating exquisite surreality. However, it was when these scenes were placed in the larger framework of creating feature films in their entirety that Russell drew criticism. Critics were quick to note that Russell's flights of fancy dwarfed the more substantial elements necessary to create a successful film--narrative, acting, dramatic tension. Some critics went so far as to say that Russell never fully learned the essentials of film grammar and was not a director but merely an amateurish provocateur. According to these same critics his outlandish imaginal scenes were superfluous at best, and, at worst, these excesses completely destroyed, overburdened, and buried the structure of his films.

Highest criticism was reserved for his films specifically based upon historical figures and events. Russell's insistence of injecting inaccurate dreamscapes, and thereby twisting the reality of the situation, was considered an abomination by many. Patrick Goldstein comments on Russell's ability to "warp" his subject matter by application of his imagination: "Ken Russell is the sort of filmmaker who could turn a home movie about a tow-headed cherub's fifth birthday into a romp through Sodom and Gomorrah." In defense, Russell justifies his liberal accounting of his subject matter by his yearning to create a fuller portrait of events and figures by blending the objective "reality" with the subjective, by synthesizing the inner realms with exterior historicity. To give the most accurate representation of history, Russell would argue, it is necessary to blur dream and fact, myth and reality into one cohesive structure. Russell also justifies his heavy reliance on the imaginal by the mere matter of economy: "When every second counts, it is often necessary to say two things at once, which is why I frequently introduce symbols into scenes of reality."

Reflecting on Russell's career, it is much more difficult to dismiss his films as critics were easy to do upon initial release. It is true that he had more "misses" than "hits," but often his most despised, controversial pieces are his most perfectly rendered and should be reevaluated now that there is appropriate distance from his work. The films made at the apex of his career--between "Women and Love"(1969) and "Tommy"(1975)-- are all triumphs. The creative output in this six year period is at a sustained intensity and level of brilliance which is rarely matched in film history. With the exception of "Altered States," Russell was never quite able to recapture the level of excellence that he achieved during the late sixties and early seventies. Russell was more content at relying upon old tricks than growing as an artist. Nevertheless, the films after "Tommy" do hold some interest and are worth seeing if only to indulge our inner voyeur.

We leave off with a quote from fellow filmmaker Tony Palmer which captures the the complexity of Russell as director: "In all his films, facts are rearranged or altered to satisfy immediate needs; acting is frequently subordinated to the predominant mood; the music is loud and obtrusive; love and tenderness are absent even when they are the very essence of the piece; talent is everywhere apparent, yet without the restraining hand of understanding to guide and shape it... Russell's work has never matured: he seems to retain a continuing childish delight in exorcising his sexual and religious fantasies in public...[However] There remains a corpus of work that would be and is the total envy of many if not most directors... I go to Russell's films--as I go to those of Welles or Ford or Fellini--to learn how it is done."

 

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