This Must Be the Place

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Kei­th Richards recalls dri­ving a car stashed with dope through Arkansas and gig­ging in road­hous­es along the way. He writes of the truck­ers he met on his jour­ney: ​‘They’d call us girls because of the long hair.

“How you doing girls? Dance with me?” Hair; the lit­tle things you wouldn’t think about that change whole cul­tures. When you look back, it was relent­less con­fronta­tion. But you’re not think­ing about it at the time. These were all new expe­ri­ences, and you weren’t aware of the effect it might or might not have on you.You grad­u­al­ly grow into it.’

Pao­lo Sorrentino’s new film depicts a rock star who, a long time ago, also helped to change a cul­ture. Played in full camp by Sean Penn, Cheyenne has long hair, a cracked voice and a life­time of new expe­ri­ences. Unlike Kei­th, Cheyenne quit the music biz pre­ma­ture­ly. He lives off his roy­al­ties with an ador­ing wife (Frances McDor­mand) in a vast mau­soleum out­side Dublin, bored and a lit­tle depressed.

This slow rhythm is bro­ken when Cheyenne’s estranged father dies in New York. He must return home, reac­quaint him­self with his Jew­ish fam­i­ly and come to terms with the rela­tion­ship he nev­er had with his father.

What fol­lows is a sprawl­ing road trip across the Amer­i­can heart­land as Cheyenne attempts to fin­ish a jour­ney his father began, and avenge a humil­i­a­tion from long ago.

It is rumoured that Penn receives 40 scripts a month, and it’s not dif­fi­cult to see why he chose this one. Sus­tain­ing this film as it eccen­tri­cal­ly twists and turns is the notion that Cheyenne – with his child­like sin­cer­i­ty – can reach out to nor­mal peo­ple, in all their glo­ri­ous shapes and sizes, as he ambles towards the hori­zon. It’s typ­i­cal Penn, like I Am Sam, 21 Grams and Into the Wild rolled into one, only direct­ed by Ozzy Osbourne.

But those films ter­mi­nal­ly lacked the art­house high-stylings of some­one like Sor­renti­no, or a gor­geous melod­ic score like the one pro­vid­ed by Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne and Bon­nie ​‘Prince’ Bil­ly, clear­ly kin­dred spir­its. There’s a remark­able, won­der­ful­ly exe­cut­ed long shot of Byrne per­form­ing the film’s title song with Cheyenne camped in the crowd. Sim­i­lar­ly, there’s real beau­ty in the deep, rich cadence of the Nazi war crim­i­nal Aloise Lange (Heinz Lieven) – now an impos­si­bly old, frag­ile and seclud­ed man – as he reads a let­ter received from Cheyenne’s father.

It’s easy to bow to a crit­i­cal dar­ling like Sor­renti­no, but so much of this film is con­fronta­tion­al: Penn’s effete, Lily Sav­age-esque per­for­mance is bound to divide opin­ion, while none of Sorrentino’s pro­ces­sion of char­ac­ters are capa­ble of respond­ing to Cheyenne’s strange­ness with any­thing but glee. The film’s whim­si­cal take on the lega­cy of the Holo­caust will leave some view­ers gasp­ing for air.

But one Sor­renti­no com­ment is reveal­ing: ​“For men who float with depres­sion, irony is often the only accept­able way of deal­ing with life.” This Must Be the Place is a dark film han­dled with light­ness and ease. As Kei­th would say, you have to grad­u­al­ly grow into it.