ByTowne ByTowne Cinema
ByTowne Cinema
325 Rideau St. Ottawa K1N 5Y4
Info Line: (613) 789-FILM
Tommy
Print this pageMust-See Cinema! Whatever happened to rock operas, anyway? We miss them!
Showtimes:
No screenings currently scheduled.
Ken Russell makes movies the way another man might design a ride through a funhouse. He deals in headlong but harmless plunges from giddy heights, abrupt changes of pace, joke turns, anachronistic visual effects, ghouls that pop out of the dark, all accompanied by sound of a force to loosen one’s most firmly rooted back teeth. Now, at long last, the man and his method have found a nearly perfect match in subject matter, Tommy, The Who’s rock opera written by guitarist-composer Pete Townshend.
The resulting film is mad, funny, irreverent, passionately overproduced, very very loud and full of the kind of magnificent physical energy that usually wrecks a movie by calling attention to performance.
Tommy is a solemn tale that must not be taken too seriously. It’s an elaborate put-on about the terrible victimization of a small boy who is traumatized deaf, dumb and blind when he sees his stepfather murder his real father. Young Tommy then goes on to become the pinball champ of the world and, eventually, after he miraculously regains his senses, the new messiah who preaches salvation through pinball playing.
The movie, which has the structure of a vaudeville show, is laced together with specialty bits, some of which are simply jokes (Jack Nicholson playing a vacuous Harley Street medical specialist) and some of which are production numbers as riveting as rock can be at its best. These include a sequence in which Tina Turner shows up as The Acid Queen who attempts to cure the catatonic Tommy, and others with Elton John, as the Pinball Wizard defeated by Tommy, and Eric Clapton, as the Preacher who presides over a Lourdes-like shrine devoted to the healing powers of St. Marilyn (Monroe).
As I said, it’s all fairly excessive and far from subtle, but in this case good taste would have been wildly inappropriate and a fearful drag.
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
The ByTowne doesn't have a parking lot of its own, but denizens of downtown can usually find street parking close by fairly easily.
This web site is very useful, but the hard copy of the ByTowne guide still has its merits. People rely on it and love it. Plus, its calendar pages can be pulled out and posted on your fridge door, something that we still can't achieve with the web site. Get your copy today at many local stores, coffee shops and info centres around town! 