Review Of Somebody Up There Likes Me

Oscar-winning executive Mike Figgis sparkles a focus on Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, with support vocals by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
A Rolling Stone assembles next to no greenery in Somebody Up There Likes Me, a slim narrative picture of Ronnie Wood from Oscar-winning chief Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) which gathers the veteran rocker's 50 years vocation into a lively 71 minutes. Still a magnificently photogenic meeting subject at 72, with his emaciatedly rugged highlights and lastingly ebony tuft of crow-plume hair, Wood muses here on his long help with the Stones, his sideline energy as a painter, his battles with medication and liquor compulsion and that's only the tip of the iceberg.



World debuting at the London Film Festival in front of an arranged business discharge one year from now, Somebody Up There Likes Me ought to demonstrate a simple offer to undemanding Stones fans and music-accommodating fest software engineers. Yet, for genuine shake researchers and aficionados of value documentaries when all is said in done, this lightweight vanity undertaking will feel disappointingly thin and spur of the moment.

Wood's biography peruses like social history of post-war Britain. Conceived in 1947, the child of average workers "water rovers" on the western edges of London, he pursued the long and twisting street to shake superstardom by means of workmanship school and an energetic captivation by American R&B. By his mid twenties, he was imparting a phase to Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck and others. A chain-smoking, substantial drinking hard core partier for more than 50 years, Wood at last paid the cost for his indecencies. In the course of recent decades he has looked into recovery at any rate multiple times, fundamentally for liquor enslavement.

Figgis avoids through this succulent material in a strangely random way, dubious on order and light on detail. Wood's three relationships and six youngsters scarcely merit a notice, excepting a concise late appearance by his present spouse Sally. His medical procedure for lung malignant growth in 2017, which propelled the film's title, is abstained from in a 30-second aside. His side profession as a visual craftsman fills in as a surrounding gadget between meeting areas, however his works of art just figure briefly in the film.

Other than meeting Wood finally, Figgis additionally collects an amazingly excellent list of attendees of companions and associates including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Rod Stewart, artist Imelda May and craftsman Damien Hirst. Oh dear, the vast majority of these skillfully equivocal media veterans offer just hackneyed bits of knowledge into the indestructible rocker's mind. "He resembles me," Richards chuckles, "extraordinary resistant framework." Figgis likewise reuses chronicle video of his own casual discussions with Led Zeppelin's famously thuggish chief Peter Grant and previous Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren, both long dead, however this arrangement feels like a pointless reroute just extraneously identified with Wood.

Still sparky and energetic at 72, Wood himself appears to be an approachable and bright soul, however very little given to uncovering self-assessment. At a certain point, he condenses his mentality to existence with the scrumptiously Spinal Tap-like axiom: "On the off chance that you go to a crossroads, take it."

Figgis shoots Somebody Up There Likes Me in traditional shake doc style, with barely a trace of his mark formal experimentalism other than a short split-screen succession and an onscreen realistic delineating guitar harmony tabs. The melodic intermissions incorporate uncommonly shot present-day exhibitions close by great chronicle film drawn from Wood's long multi-band profession. These vintage clasps are the film's most grounded selling point, in spite of the fact that there is inquisitively little Stones material here. Wood's extra-curricular coordinated efforts with legends like Bob Dylan, Prince, David Bowie and Aretha Franklin are additionally missing — yet all the more bewildering exclusions from a narrative that could have been a rich widescreen canvas, yet winds up feeling like a watercolor sketch.

Creation organization: Eagle Rock Film Productions

Cast: Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Rod Stewart, Imelda May, Damien Hirst, Sally Wood

Executive: Mike Figgis

Makers: Peter Worsley, Louis Figgis

Setting: London Film Festival

71 minutes