Fridae

One of the most haunting resonances today when you watch The Wizard of Oz is knowing what happened to that girl who sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", she went over it all right, to that land once heard of in a lullaby: that land of fake emerald cities, fields of deadly poppies, and even tin men may realize that hearts are meant to be broken, and never truly came back. All too often, that's where every Dorothy singing in the Kansas cornfield ends up as the twister approaches over the horizon, and Oz's Wicked Witches just beyond it.

The Runaways looks like a standard issue band biopic, chronicling its rise from obscurity and its subsequent fall, and the way the band members part. But its savvy lies in its knowledge of this most classic of American myths, and the manner in which it celebrates and illuminates it.

The Runaways felt like there’s almost two movies in here; one movie is about what it means to be Dorothy, in the form of Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). A suburban, middle class girl saddled with a drunken dad and a selfish high-maintenance mom, and a loving but less talented elder sister. Cherie lip-syncs to Bowie and Peggy Lee, dreaming of something beyond the limits of her dreary existence. She finds it in the company of a group of girls around her age, under the guidance of a mysterious, eccentric and scene-stealing impresario named Kim Fowley. And pretty soon, the girl that swayed to Peggy Lee's fever is transformed into a wailing blonde banshee. Home becomes little more than a memory, its dreariness turned to warmth and comfort through rose-tinted eyes – but really, that's just the inflamed blood vessels from all the cracks

Then the second movie is about what it means to be the Wicked Witch, in the form of Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Joan is bad, mad and tough as nails from the very beginning. A take-no-prisoners survivor, her body seems to be immune to the effects of the drugs she ingests. She is born for the life, bred for the life, and never turns back. Yet she is Cherie's friend and mentor, sticking up for Cherie and stays as her friend as much as possible. Predictably she drags Cherie down into an abyss of sex, drugs and booze. That Jett's character actually changes little throughout the film is part of its recognition of what Jett is and always was: befitting her comic book name, she starts out leaping over the rainbow and stays there.

But it's also part of the film's perverse genius that it recognizes that Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West are in fact, mirror reflections of each other. And that while the long hard road out of Oz is a story worth telling, it's always the witch you cheer for. The casting of Stewart and Fanning, who looked too much like plain Janes to be the axe (guitar)-wielding valkyries they were supposed to be seemed iffy at first, but it actually works out in the movie's favor when it turns out that the movie is in part about the transformation of these average looking girls into the howling hellions they would become.

And what about the great and powerful wizard? Michael Shannon steals the movie as Kim Fowley. A gifted character actor who this reviewer has seen from his work as a protohippie idiot savant in Revolutionary Road, Shannon is a Mephistophelean combination of savvy, cruelty and wisdom. Equal parts as mentor, tormentor and dementor, he trains his charges in the ways of rock and roll with a cruelty that’s effective and cunningly wise that it borders on the edge of tough love. You hate what he does, but man, do you love the results.

The procession of the narrative and the ending are standard fare for anyone who is familiar with the conventions of band biopics. However, the performances and the savvy of writer/director Floria Sigismondi  elevates The Runaways above the usual band biopic.