‘The Round Up’: The movie Scott Walker watched six nights in a row
There are plenty of musicians out there, but Scott Walker stands alone as the musician’s musician.
I’ve interviewed countless performers over the years, and above all others, Walker is often the one that they quietly revere the most. It’s hard to say whether he would’ve cared much for this titbit. He was certainly thankful for and humbled by David Bowie’s adoration, but also the reason he stands alone on a pedestal of peer support is because of the fact that by and large he followed his own muse to a steadfast nth.
However, there’s also a hint of a paradox even in that, because his muse was not entirely deplored by the platitudes and structure of pop. As my most recent interview with a star singing old Scott’s praises revealed, when Neil Hannon pronounced, “[I love Scott Walker because] I really love it when kind of strange, arty music is connected to pop music”.
That, in short, encapsulates the appeal of the late ‘Matilda’ singer, and it also typifies his interests. He was a cinephile who adored arthouse movies that packed a punch. One of these was The Round-Up from 1965.
In fact, he loved this strange yet strangely accessible Miklós Jancsó film so much that he went to watch it six nights running when it was screen in London upon release. Shortly thereafter, it disappeared pretty much forever. However, when Walker was asked to curate a programme for BFI’s Meltdown festival in 2000, he tasked the archivists with uncovering it, and the hypnotic Hungarian oddity captivated audiences once more.
The 90-minute masterpiece (remember those!) takes a distant view, often literally, in the way it is filmed frequently in a long shot form, of the battle between the Lajos Kossuth-led rebels and the Austrian rule in Hungary. While Kossuth might have been crushed by the strongarm of hegemony, partisan action is still widespread.
The film takes a snippet of the oppression faced as a group of suspects are rounded up and brought to an isolated fort where the authorities try to identify the guerrilla leaders. In the same way that Walker could make four chords on an acoustic sound like a symphony, and yet also make obscure experimentalism easily palatable, The Round-Up feels brutal and violent, but without ever really raising its voice.
It’s also deeply unconventional, largely shunning plot and character development, but it somehow carries the beats of a thriller. That ‘somehow’ is perhaps what kept Walker coming back, much in the same way that his music, somehow symphonies, somehow simple, ensures that many captivated peers keep returning to his work around six times a week, too.
