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One might think it a fool’s errand for a filmmaker as revered as Todd Haynes to build his documentary debut around a rock band Cher thought so lame she famously declared, “They will replace nothing … except maybe suicide.”  Ah, but when that band is The Velvet Underground, you go for it with gusto, which is what Haynes does in meticulously examining the rise and fall of perhaps America’s most influential avant-garde music makers. 

Succinctly titled “The Velvet Underground,” the movie is as ambitious and unique as its subject, employing split screens and a dreamlike aura befitting a band as ethereal as its spokey paeans to human suffering. The focus is deservedly on founders Lou Reed and John Cale, but Haynes is just as interested in the environment in which the pair took their creativity to the heights at a time and in a place (1960s New York) where experimentation and free-thinking were not just encouraged but demanded. But what facilitated that embrace of ingenuity?

Was it Reed’s hunger to shatter rock’s formulaic barriers, or the constant nurturing of the band’s chief benefactor, Andy Warhol, who so enjoyed The Velvet Underground, he appointed them the house band at his legendary Factory? The question invokes the old chicken-egg idiom. Were Warhol’s followers soaking up Reed and Cale’s journey beyond the norm, or was the band inspired by the poets, painters, actors and filmmakers sharing space on the fifth floor of 231 East 47th St.? Haynes doesn’t make a definitive determination, but he compellingly sets the scene for what was to become the era's epicenter of artistic expression and sexual revolution.

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In addition to the Underground’s strangely captivating melodies ("Venus in Furs," "Waiting For the Man," "Heroin"), the movie thrives on the deep dive Haynes takes into seeking and acquiring priceless footage – much of it shot by Warhol – that nostalgically sweeps you back to the mid-1960s and that palpable air of revolt. “We aren’t the counterculture,” one Factory member declares, “We are the culture.”  And it’s hard to argue otherwise after observing how the experimental films shot by Warhol and his crew clearly left an imprint on the consciences of George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and their fellow “movie brats.”

This nexus of music and art is nothing new to Haynes (“Carol,” “Far from Heaven”), who fictionalized much of what’s here in 1998’s “Velvet Goldmine.” It’s not just the music, it’s the attitude. And The Velvet Underground certainly had it in abundance. As Cale quips, “We knew how to be elegant and how to be brutal.” Much of that evolved via Cale and Reed’s diametric backgrounds and tastes. Reed, a manic-depressive, self-taught rocker from Long Island; and Cale, a classically trained, erudite Welshman. They were fire and water, commingling crude guitar chords and screeching viola into a sound characterizing the tedium of human existence.

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It’s a shame Reed and lead guitarist Sterling Morrison aren’t alive to share their recollections beyond archival interviews; same for Warhol, who died in 1987, and the fabulous Nico, the late Dietrich-esque torch singer whose haunting vocals made the Underground’s first album an instant classic. Reed wasn’t keen on her, but Warhol insisted the band needed a beautiful face. Nico was certainly that. Her looks and icy demeanor were the perfect complement to the detached tones of the band’s drone-like sound. The film ruefully doesn’t spend much time on her beyond a few bits of praise offered by ex-beau Jackson Browne, who famously penned “These Days” for her. But if you’d like to know more, check out the recent feature film, “Nico,” which gives her the due she deserves, warts and all.

Like that movie, this one displays a tone that’s largely muted and dour, although Haynes wisely injects layers of levity. Most notably, Cale’s very strange appearance on “What’s My Line” in the early 1960s, a guest shot so bizarre it had the panel struggling to repress their laughter when the future Rock ’n’ Roll Hall-of-Famer provides a sample of the repetitive piano dirge he played consecutively 840 times during an 18-hour marathon.  Equally humorous are Warhol’s followers expressing their utter disdain for hippies and “the summer of love,” calling their West Coast counterparts delusional and lazy. “Why don’t they do something to help the homeless or the poor instead of sticking flowers in their hair,” rants Underground drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker.

Superfan Jonathan Richman

Bostonians who were around in the 1960s will certainly get a charge out of local boy and Underground geek Jonathan Richman ("Roadrunner”) fondly recalling the many nights he spent attending Velvet Underground concerts at one of its favorite venues, the old Boston Tea Party on Berkeley Street in the South End.

By the end of this fascinating, involving documentary, you’ll envy Richman’s “life-changing” experience seeing his heroes perform live before time and changing tastes eventually earned The Velvet Underground the kind of acclaim and following it frustratingly never achieved in the moment. Interesting, because time and the concept of altering it, Cale says, is what most inspired both Warhol and the band. And that dynamic is vividly on display in Haynes’ trippy rockumentary, as we observe music makers not just standing the test of time, but defying it by creating art in an instant that will last an eternity.

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'The Velvet Underground'

Rating: R for some drug material, language, sexual content, nudity.

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Mary Woronov and Jonathan Richman.

How to watch: Premiering Oct. 15 in theaters and on Apple TV+

Grade: A-

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