Sweet, but needs practice.
The grunge era of the 1990s hit its self-reflexive peak when it collided with MTV’s hugely popular ‘Unplugged’ series (bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this), in which famous artists performed acoustic versions of their hit songs. It was one thing for Eric Clapton, Tony Bennett, or Mariah Carey to perform Unplugged – established stars or pop performers who built their careers with songs crafted for arrangement and re-arrangement are engineered to win over any crowd, even the show’s jaded Gen X audience. But hot new breakouts like Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and of course Nirvana performing Unplugged were a revelation: beneath the LOUD-quiet-LOUD dynamics, distorted guitars, and decadent trappings were real, durable songs, decent musicianship, and even vulnerability – diamonds in the rough. These performances, this format, made clear what a thousand interviews, reviews, and think pieces could never: not only the craft, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness these artists possessed, but the bruised and battered form which crystalised it – the medium is the message, etc. Of course, you had to be there: familiarity with the original, noisy versions made the reimagined, quiet versions novel. Practiced callousness giving way to bruised, often fumbling tenderness, is endearing.
As someone who was there, I can nonetheless imagine that anyone today hearing an Unplugged version of a grunge song without already being familiar with the original might wonder what was so great about it, if it sounded like anything to them at all. These were artists deliberately not playing to their strengths; these were alt versions – but if you don’t personally know this, then it isn’t ‘alt’ to anything, and there is a puzzling absence of discernible strengths. Meanwhile:
there is a world of great artists whose music doesn’t depend on or even feature fuzzed-out guitars or jaded cynicism, and they’re far better at doing acoustic and sincere simply because it’s where they live.
I’m not a Stephen King or Mike Flanagan person, and I’m not a horror person, so I have no reference for the grunge of these artists. So their Unplugged collab, The Life of Chuck (the novella by the former, adapted for the screen by the latter), is, to my ears, pretty meh. It’s a sweet-coded meditation on the inevitability of death, and its light-touch fantasy and earnestness are, I’m sure, refreshing if not a revelation for fans of their regular work. There are some lovely performances (and dancing) from a great ensemble cast (personal standouts include Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Samantha Sloyan as Miss Rohrbacher, and of course Mia Sara as Chuck’s dear Bubbe), captured with some oddly flat cinematography (from usually-solid DP Eben Bolter). But for me, The Life of Chuck doesn’t say or do anything that other storytellers who live in this space, rather than merely visit it, have said with more elegance, poetry, and emotional meat on the bone. Acoustic music with these themes can be so much richer.
Further Viewing
For a prefectly-crafted mix of whimsy, dark undertones, and triumph-of-the-human-spirit, there’s The Truman Show (1998):
And of course, there is Amélie (2002):