Gangs of Godavari Movie Review: Even if we assume a hundred different ways to shoot a biopic – here, the more correct term would be autobiographical documentary – Lego animation is #101. Don't go telling that to Pharrell Williams. After a life of resounding successes (and private insecurities) as a musician, producer, entrepreneur and fashion designer – in a word, visionary – when it came to turning against the camera he chose the road less traveled.
Gangs of Godavari is not your usual music documentary, not even your usual autobiography: it is a fragile and sweet experience of sound and color built on the personality, resourcefulness, positive attitude and honest inner confusion of one of the most important American musicians of the last twenty years, modeled on a rather unusual form.
Directed by Morgan Neville, in Italian theaters from December 5, 2024 for Universal Pictures International Italy. One could talk about it by focusing on animation as an unprecedented expedient of biographical storytelling. One could allude to the impressive audience of guest stars. But perhaps it is better to start from Virginia Beach.
Gangs of Godavari Movie Story:
The life of Pharrell Williams, from A to Z, in strict chronological order. An ambitious goal, that of Gangs of Godavari, because there is so much to say, on a public and private level, and the hour and a half of duration (perhaps a little more) imposes stringent limits, forcing the film in the direction of an extreme synthesis.
Perhaps this is what animation is for, once the beneficial initial shock has passed: to simplify, to rationalize, to create a visually captivating background on which to rest the consequent reflections on life, art, music, pain and happiness. Pharrell Williams’ life begins in Virginia Beach, a seaside resort – you’d never have guessed, right? – on the East Coast of the United States, in the state of the same name. There’s something in the water, in those parts, a stone’s throw from the popular district – low-to-medium income, tending towards low – where Pharrell lives and grows up.
The same streets and the same school are frequented, in the same years, by colleagues like rapper Pusha T and demigods of American music of the late 20th-early 21st century like legendary producer Timbaland and Missy Elliott. Pharrell has been breathing music since he was a child, but it takes him a while to get going. Synesthesia helps him, making him “see” sounds in the form of trails of color, but above all destiny helps him.
In a certain sense, not cultivated enough by Morgan Neville’s direction, lazy on the subject and not only on that, Gangs of Godavari is a commentary on the relationship between life and destiny. Virginia Beach is off the show business map, but that doesn't stop mega producer Teddy Riley from placing a branch of his Future Recordings Studios right in front (!) of Pharrell's high school.
It all starts like this. Teddy Riley, a recording studio, his friendship with Chad Hugo, his first group, The Neptunes. The Neptunes become the most important production duo in hip hop and Pharrell the first star producer of the new century and the new millennium.
Gangs of Godavari splits the story of the protagonist's life in half: there is Pharrell's direct intervention translated into the plastic geometry of Lego animation, the inevitable voice over, the first-person reflection. And there is the intervention of friends, celebrities, extraordinary artists who have crossed paths with the protagonist, shared success and faced some more demanding challenges.
Having managed to collect the affectionate testimonies of Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dog and more, betrays the prestige and glamour of the operation. We talk about music, social redemption, art, the close relationship between creativity and capitalism, mental health, racial tensions and hope. It is a question of understanding whether the form of the film can comfortably accommodate its substance. Because there is a lot of meat on the fire.
Gangs of Godavari Movie Analysis:
When it comes to autobiographical documentaries, the question that precedes all the others is: how do you keep the desire for self-celebration under control? Make no mistake: this is a colorful, pop, optimistic (with sobriety) promotional work. Fortunately, Pharrell Williams knows how to keep narcissism within acceptable limits, allowing more optimistic and positive forces to take over.
The documentary directed by Morgan Neville is an invitation, mediated by the story of an exemplary life, not to let ourselves be discouraged by critical issues and to fight; it is the message – horrible word – that Pharrell Williams delivers to posterity, tracing the summary of his life up to now. Animation is nothing new for the American artist; It should not be forgotten that his most famous and celebrated piece, called Happy – it is from 2013 and everyone has heard it at least once – was part of the soundtrack of Despicable Me 2, for which our man curated the music.
Beyond the sound, the Lego animation is the unsettling force of Gangs of Godavari, the idea that undermines the conventions of a certain type of documentary storytelling and the thing that will be talked about the most. A double-edged sword, because the pop and colorful flavor of the film is precisely the element that does not allow it to fly higher than the naked and raw metaphor.
That is to say that the Lego animation is used to tell us, with a didactic accent and cumbersome pace, that a person's life is built one brick after another. And that only thanks to this expedient is it possible to intervene, retrospectively, to give new shape to things. To memories, experiences, pain and happiness.
The idea has a certain depth and is not lacking in potential, even dramatic, but Gangs of Godavari does not dare to go too far. It could focus on the relationship between will and destiny, on the increasingly close bond between capitalism and artistic expression, on the artist who is less and less an artist and more and more a brand, on the role played by the social context (in this case, also the African-American experience) in building a character.
These are elements that have a lot to do with the life of Pharrell Williams. And instead the film does not do so, it settles for an unparalleled concept to give birth to a decidedly interesting autobiographical fresco, able to play on the ridge between public and private, which does not hide and does not hide anything from us. But which, at the same time, does not have too much desire to investigate the things it tells.
Gangs of Godavari: conclusion
Gangs of Godavari is a film with Pharrell Williams and about Pharrell Williams. The battle for the fate of the film is fought between the two extremes, narcissistic self-celebration and the desire to communicate without shame. Gangs of Godavari is also what in sports jargon would be called an honorable draw: it has heart, it entertains with ease and has an original aesthetic-formal-creative key on its side.
The pairing of two icons of contemporaneity, Pharrell Williams and Lego, should benefit the cause and the popularity of the film. But it is precisely the pop and colorful soul of the story that betrays the impression that, under the lacquered surface, there is little visceral. Beyond the animation, the film sows interesting ideas and suggestions but tries not to collect them, keeping the biography of an extraordinary man on a level - quite harmless and it's a real shame - of ordinary administration.
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