Bryan Barber’s Idlewild is a tour de force of style, of song and dance, of energetic cinematic pizazz, and a loving ode to the big Hollywood musical that happens to be spliced with the gangster film, all shot in a modern, MTV-inspired aesthetic that I think is wildly unique and more than eye-popping on an aesthetic level. Charles William Breen‘s extravagantly detailed and lush production design should have received an Oscar nomination – it’s really crimes against cinema that this didn’t happen. Every set, every scene, all sense of art direction is so in tune with all the elements that this really becomes a true feast for the senses. From top to bottom, Idlewild is insanely underrated, as it never had a wide enough release nor was it treated with any sort of respect from a pedigree standpoint. Marketed simply as “the Outkast movie,” Idlewild is so much more than that — it’s a crazy explosion of so many elements and genres and styles that I’m not really surprised that it flew under the radar. It’s sort of like The Cotton Club on acid, spiced up with sexy and sultry song and dance numbers, with a solid gangster-movie plot that sets into motion all the dramatic conflict that a narrative would need. Barber threw everything in his back pocket into this film — it’s stuffed (some might say overstuffed but not me!) with visual information that stretches the mise-en-scene to new heights and the film seems absolutely drunk with the many possibilities that the cinematic art form can provide.
Swept under the rug with a half-hearted, late summer theatrical release by Universal Pictures, the film hasn’t even been graced with a spiffed up transfer on the Blu-ray format, which is tantamount to a slap in the face to the extremely gifted cinematographer Pascal Rabaud, who shot the ever-living-hell out of each and every frame of this dazzling motion picture. I had the chance to see this one in the theater, and I can definitely say that it was an overwhelming experience to behold on the big screen. The absolutely ridiculous cast includes Ving Rhames, Terrence Howard, the show-stoppingly gorgeous Paula Patton, Cicely Tyson, Macy Gray, Faizon Love, Ben Vereen, Patti LaBelle, Bruce Bruce, Malinda Williams, and Jackie Long. John Debney’s eclectic and always present musical score envelopes the entire picture with a jazzy sense of spirit, and because the film is so thick with period flavor and distinct visual atmosphere, you really get the sense of being fully transported to the world that all of these fabulous people put on display. I knew this movie was for me when the song notes started dancing off the music-book pages for the piano players, and when the rooster emblem on the flask started to dance and crow. At times, the film feels like it belongs in the same company as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge or The Great Gatsby — this was maximalist filmmaking delivered at a furious pace with a ton of heart and soul underneath the supreme sense of high style. Idlewild is like no other musical that you’ve seen and it’s so deserving of rediscovery that it almost feels comical.
Podcasting Them Softly 