Stephen Woolley:
Stoned (United Kingdom, 2005)
Production: Number 9 Films Ltd, Finola Dwyer Productions
102 min - 35mm. English. No Finnish subtitles.
Not allowed for persons under 15 years of age.
Fame, glory and death – or whatever happened to Brian Jones?
In this biographical but fictional film based on the book by Terry Rawlings, Stephen Woolley tries to follow the last days of Brian Jones, one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones. As the talented guitarist drowned in a swimming pool in July 2nd 1969, the event played its part in ending the age of Aquarius and the decade of peace and love.
Jones' death was a confused affair. Less than a month before his death he had been made to quit The Rolling Stones, after which he locked himself in his manor house and immersed into decadent partying with loads of drugs, alcohol and sex. The death was widely considered as an accident evidently caused by the dangerous lifestyle of the 27-year-old guitarist, until in 1993 the manor's janitor, a man called Frank Thorogood, confessed on his deathbed the murder of his employer.
Stoned is not a film about the music of The Rolling Stones. Instead, it concentrates on how the star of a gifted musician started to grow dim and how the relationship with Thorogood eventually turned sadistic. Woolley's inventive camerawork and great costumes make an authentic, visually tickling picture of the swinging England in the sixties. The film is an unembellished excavation of the darkest moment in the history of the most influential rock band of our time, but also a portrayal of the vanishing innocence of the Sixties and the dirty side of the rock'n'roll dream.
