Anita Pallenberg was a muse in the original meaning of the word. She embodied the essence of something, conjuring it into reality. In her case, this spark of innovation and artistry represented the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.
Directed by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (2023) is an immaculately-crafted tribute to the spiritus movens of The Rolling Stones, the style icon that inspired Kate Moss, the MVP of hipster cinema of the 1960s and 1970s — hail her Great Tyrant in Barbarella (1968) and Pherber in Performance (1968) — and the godmother of the counterculture scene in London, for decades.
It seems strange and somehow entirely expected that not many people nowadays would have heard of Pallenberg. This doc aims to disrupt that state of affairs, as was the manner of Anita, herself, energetically rearranging every room she ever entered.
Based on her unpublished memoirs, titled “Black Magic”, which were found in her belongings by her grandchildren, neatly typed and waiting to be claimed, this tour de force of archival wonders is also a labour of love of her two children by Keith Richards, Marlon and Angela (their third, a boy, Tara Jo Jo, died in infancy).
By opening their family archives, with all the astonishing Super 8 footage (kept safe by Anita’s friend Sandro Sursock), a cornucopia of photographs, and miscellaneous minutia, they made it possible for Anita to be cinematically resurrected, just as she was. Narrating the film, from Anita’s manuscripts, is Scarlett Johansson, an apt pick for this tale, quite deliberately chosen for her “credible sexy DNA” (as director Alexis put it in her interview for LRM).
A German/Italian, and a WWII kid, Anita claims to be have been running before she ever walked. And witnessing her life through a collage of dazzling images and haunting details (in which the devil lurks), it seems that her insistence on forward-motion, and never looking back, was the key to her survival. Anita’s boho-artistic-aristo family offered her sophistication, a laid-back cosmopolitanism, an intellectual approach to art, while her own rebellious nature smashed it all to pieces, and created an unapologetically honest, authentic, sometimes terrifyingly tragic life.
Anita calls her memoir a “traveller’s tale”, and it is clear by the accounts of the people assembled as witnesses to this human tornado, from Marianne Faithfull, Volker Schlöndorff, Kate Moss, to Keith Richards, himself, that Anita left a mark on everyone she touched, inspiring loyalty, love, and respect, but also — remained an enigma.
In its quest to not be either salacious or sensationalist, yet not turn away from the darkest corners of Pallenberg’s existence, marred with heavy addiction and transgressions, the film skips a few beats, and does not include some possibly crucial information on Anita, her beliefs, occult inclinations, further troubles with the law, and a bunch of difficult details and black boxes perhaps best left unopened.
Who would want so many trivial things crammed in a elegant story, anyway.
As her son Marlon says: “It was important that eventually she said something.” And, being a woman that both inspired and pushed into motion a colossally important art movement of the 20th century, as well as aided and abetted a string of emerging talent, since — it was high time she did.
Fascinating and classy, both tough-as-nails and tender — an exhilarating watch.
My hunch is — just as Anita would have wanted.
★★★★☆
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 