‘Bastards’: The harrowing movie Kim Gordon calls “devastatingly brutal”
Sonic Youth quickly became alt-rock icons when they emerged from New York’s dissonant and noisy no-wave scene, which served as a reaction against the much more popular new wave movement gaining speed at the same time. Never ones to conform to what’s accessible, Sonic Youth pioneered a distinctive sound led by unconventional tunings and a combination of male and female vocals, with bassist Kim Gordon often taking the lead with her snarling and impassioned voice.
Since the late 1970s, the band has come a long, long way, releasing classic albums like Goo and Daydream Nation. They’ve also involved themselves with cinema from the very beginning, with their 1984 song ‘Death Valley ‘69’ accompanied by a controversial and graphic music video directed by artist Judith Barry and underground filmmaker Richard Kern. It seems as though the band have always been interested in transgressive, independent, and experimental works of cinema, and they’ve even soundtracked a fair few movies, too.
Sonic Youth are perhaps best associated with Olivier Assayas, who used ‘Tunic (Song For Karen)’ in his classic 1996 film Irma Vep before asking the band to create the soundtrack for his 2002 movie Demonlover. Gordon even featured in his 2007 film Boarding Gate, a French thriller also starring Michael Madsen.
Yet, Assayas isn’t the only French filmmaker Gordon has an affinity with. She also loves Claire Denis, who broke through with her stunning exploration of masculinity, Beau Travail, in 1999. Seven years later, Denis collaborated with Sonic Youth for the ‘Incinerate’ music video, cementing an appreciation for each other’s respective art.
Since then, Gordon has keenly followed Denis’ work, and in 2013, she found herself captivated by Bastards, which the musician called “one of the most devastatingly brutal films” she’d ever seen. That’s a pretty accurate way to sum up much of Denis’ work, which often toes a line between beauty and violence.
She explained to Variety, “I also thought it was beautiful. On second viewing I could really enjoy how gorgeously filmed it was. The dark, muted colors match the mystery of it. All Claire Denis’s films have so much that is mysterious and unspoken, but this one really lives in the dark.”
Gordon was also impressed by the way Denis used sound, adding, “The way she used sound recorded from actual situations, like the smashed car going by on a truck bed when the camera stays on it and we hear the noise of the metal and wind combined for a good 30 seconds or so. It folds so well into the rest of the soundtrack.”
Bastards starred Vincent Lindon as Marco, who sets out to uncover the truth when his brother-in-law commits suicide. Reuniting with his sister, played by Chiara Mastroianni, she leads him in the direction of a man who might have been responsible for her husband’s death. It’s a rather noir-ish tale, and evidence of Denis’ reluctance to be boxed into one specific genre. She has done horror, sci-fi, period drama, and romance, but here she excels with a tightly executed thriller.
