It’s often said of the 1960s that “if you can remember it, you weren’t really there”. Here, Anita Pallenberg, a woman who absolutely personifies the swaggering, love-drenched freedom of a certain facet of sixties art and culture, proves that to be, once and for all, quite astonishing bollocks. Before her death in 2017, Pallenberg – an era-defining model and actress who, as the ex-girlfriend of Keith Richards and Brian Jones (and briefly the lover of Mick Jagger) is often described as the unofficial “sixth Rolling Stone” – wrote her memoirs. They form the basis of this remarkable intimate documentary, navigating the shifting fortunes of her life with admirable authenticity.
Those memoirs are narrated here by “an actress” with some husky-voiced depth that will feel fairly familiar. It should —it’s Scarlet Johansson, though the film makes a point of not distracting us with that fact until the credits roll. She does a fine job lifting Pallenberg’s words from the page and giving them real depth. It’s just one strong element in an auditory tapestry that blends with the archival cinecam footage —gorgeous period fashion and all—to vividly evoke the period. The use of film and music here is note-perfect. The first appearance of a proper Rolling Stones song, ‘Gimme Shelter’, raises real goosebumps.
As it turns out, Anita Pallenberg had a great turn of phrase. “I started doing acid and I stopped modelling,” she says at one point. “You couldn’t do both … And I loved acid”. Marlon, her son with Richards, asks his father if his middle initials spelling out “LSD” (his middle names are “Leon Sundeep”) was intentional or coincidence. “She was a funny woman, your mother” comes the reply.
All of this is not just anecdotal; it’s emblematic of the life-altering choices Pallenberg made as she moved through the era, and how art and real life entwined around her as she acted as both a muse and an agent of chaos. “I wanted to be her,” says one friend. “There was a maelstrom in her … She brought adventure” says another. Darkness and drugs follow her through the sixties and seventies, but there’s light too. Marianne Faithful writes ‘Sister Morphine’ about a sea voyage with Pallenberg, Richards is inspired to write ‘Gimme Shelter’ about her relationship with Jagger during the filming of Performance, and Jagger himself writes ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ about her refusal to run away with him. Few people can boast of being such a muse.
There’s a risk of Pallenberg’s importance being constantly defined by the men around her, though her power as a fashion icon (Kate Moss says she models her whole vibe on her even today) and talent as an actress are at least allowed to shine on their own, and the 20-something Pallenberg always steals every scene we see her in, up to an including playing opposite Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Still, even here Richards manages to quite literally leach some of that value for himself, explaining that for a few years he became one of the most stylish men in the world by simply wearing his girlfriend’s clothes.
Filmmakers Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill don’t shy away from Pallenberg’s darker experiences, including her notoriously volatile relationship with Brian Jones, replete with domestic violence, though it’s curious that they swerve any mention of the mutual punch-ups with Pallenberg that Keith Richards brings up often in his own autobiography. It feels odd to let Richards, who also beat her, off the hook, especially in a film that is elsewhere so nakedly honest —for example, the couple’s son Marlon—at a mere ten years old—cleaning up firearms and needles in the aftermath of a tragic game of Russian Roulette which saw Pallenberg’s young boyfriend killed.
It’s also rather sad how the film’s momentum decelerates when it shifts its lens towards Anita’s later years. Seeing her attain a semblance of peace is innately satisfying, the final act of the film loses the urgency of the earlier segments. Pallenberg herself stated, “it doesn’t need to be a doom and gloom kind of story,” and though it doesn’t feel great to admit it, it is precisely that doom and gloom that give the story its most compelling moments.
Catching Fire is very much a double-edged sword. It exults in the euphoria of rock ‘n roll, even as it shines a light on the harrowing realities often lurking beneath its glamorous shell. The film manages to be both an ode to an icon and a cautionary tale, evoking a kaleidoscope of emotions right up to its conclusion.
It serves as both an appropriate epigraph and epitaph to Anita Pallenberg: a muse, yes, but more than that, an autonomous force whose life story offers invaluable insights into the rock ‘n’ roll ethos during a transformational moment in culture. While celebrating the extraordinary life of an icon, it also lays bare the darker underbelly of an era we can sometimes be guilty of lionising.
4/5
