The Beat Beneath My Feet
Dir: John Williams
2015
*

On my first day of film school our tutor told us that he could teach us every single aspect of film making – what he couldn’t do however was teach us film appreciation (we’d have to teach ourselves) or how to be creative (we’d just have to hope we were once we’d completed the course). John William’s film reminded me of all the students in my class who made visually brilliant films that had dreadful stories and terrible scripts. The Beat Beneath My Feet is an awful film school film that had money spent on it, I bet the catering was amazing but the mood, structure, script and story are absolute garbage. The infrequent music video moments only added to its overall incoherency. The story revolves around school boy Tom (played by Nicholas Galitzine), a supposed self-harmer (although he doesn’t fit the description) who lives with his mother in a flat somewhere in London. He has a secret love for rock music but keeps it a secret from his God-fearing mother (who never once comes across as being either God-fearing or his mother). Tom is a loner at school and is made fun of due to his habit of loosing concentration in school and freezing. Galitzine isn’t particularly convincing as a bullied school boy as he looks more like a American Apparel model (dead behind the eyes) and acts more like a crash-test dummy (with Melanie Griffith’s lips). Tom practices guitar in his building’s roof and dreams of being in a band like his way-ward father. We meet his aforementioned father in a short scene – he is played by an actor who is probably about three years older than Galitzine who seems to have leaned everything he knows about acting from The Office. One day Tom and his mother’s downstairs neighbour dies and a mysterious man moves in. Tom’s mother is soon infuriated by the loud rock music that their new neighbour plays 24 hours a day. When they try to complain he simply blows marijuana smoke at them. After spotting a tattoo on his arm, Tom works out that their new neighbour is in fact an American rock legend from the early 90s who has disappeared, feared dead. Truth is he’s in hiding due to tax avoidance and is miserable because his son died. The miserable neighbour/ex-rock star is played by Beverly Hill 90210 star Luke Perry. It’s a sad reflection on what was once a shining career. I like Perry and I am sad that he is involved in this awful film. Tom convinced/blackmails the rock legend to teach him how to play and the pair become close after initially hating each other. Rock legend then somehow falls for Tom’s mum who helps him come to terms with his son’s death, and Tom’s mum becomes less of a god-botherer – even letting Tom listen to some rock and roll. Of course everything goes wrong in the third act before going right again for the film’s finale. It is about as clichéd as it gets. The script is awful and it looks as if Williams made his actors stick to it word for word, even when it couldn’t have sounded more unnatural. The acting is painful to watch and the film’s climax would make even a neanderthal slap his own forehead. Tom supposedly writes three songs throughout the film, each one is given a weird music video that is supposedly in his head. Galitzine’s over-sized lips make it impossible for him to lip sync, which is ridiculous given that it isn’t live. The film’s saving grace could have been a great song but alas, the songs were just as bad as the acting/direction/script/story. You have to wonder whether the film was just a ploy by Williams in order to prove he can direct music videos as well as feature films but I’m afraid the end result is the complete opposite – he can’t do either. The Beat Beneath My Feet needs to choke on its own vomit and get thrown out of a hotel window immediately