If you like David Byrne, you should like this. If you don't know his work, well, who knows what you'll think!
What we have here is 90 minutes of oddball social commentary and observation about life in Virgil, a small town in Texas, interspersed with half a dozen or so songs written by David Byrne (Talking Heads) but performed by the Virgil 'residents'.
Byrne directs, narrates and stars in the film. Wandering around in his oversized Texan hat, he chats to the (fictional) residents of Virgil, and speaks into the camera directly to us, making comments on ordinary things like shopping malls, food, fashion and cars. He stumbles across lots of oddball, interesting characters and celebrates the specialness of ordinariness.
It's brilliantly done. Whether David is deriding or celebrating life in Virgil is open to debate, but there is certainly nothing nasty here. He is using the mundane, the ordinary, the bizarre and the strange as the setting for some fine music and amusing commentary, and it is quite fascinating.
It's eccentric, daft, quirky, and cool in a geeky kinda way - and like the man himself, not everyone will get it. A little gem.
What we have here is 90 minutes of oddball social commentary and observation about life in Virgil, a small town in Texas, interspersed with half a dozen or so songs written by David Byrne (Talking Heads) but performed by the Virgil 'residents'.
Byrne directs, narrates and stars in the film. Wandering around in his oversized Texan hat, he chats to the (fictional) residents of Virgil, and speaks into the camera directly to us, making comments on ordinary things like shopping malls, food, fashion and cars. He stumbles across lots of oddball, interesting characters and celebrates the specialness of ordinariness.
It's brilliantly done. Whether David is deriding or celebrating life in Virgil is open to debate, but there is certainly nothing nasty here. He is using the mundane, the ordinary, the bizarre and the strange as the setting for some fine music and amusing commentary, and it is quite fascinating.
It's eccentric, daft, quirky, and cool in a geeky kinda way - and like the man himself, not everyone will get it. A little gem.
Tell Your Friends