Stranger Things has finished. Game of Thrones is coming to an end next season. Thankfully, there’s a new sound in TV that can’t be ignored.
Right from its pulsing musical opening, The Get Down introduces itself as a dynamic romance of epic proportions from Baz Luhrmann, a director who firmly and unwaveringly believes that love conquers all. After securing a name for himself in glossy pastiche features, Luhrmann teams up with executive producer Nas to tackle crumbling 1970s New York for Netflix, where our star crossed lovers are blocked by dreams, distractions, poverty, and antiquated family values.
The schools are out, and the sticky heat of summer in the Bronx 1977 is brimming with an uncontainable youthful energy. Warm sepia hues, more film grain than a projector could deal with, and archive footage of graffitied trains coming out of the wazoo; The Get Down is a face-screwing, hip-breaking, joint aching, never-stopping disco-era-set dramedy that bursts with energy, statement making style and an unmissable tender turn from impeccable afro sporting Jaden Smith. Where there was homelessness, there was shelter in clubs! Where there was conflict, there was a shared love of music, where there were gang wars, there was family ties.
Whether it’s getting into that club to get the girl, or spraying as vividly as the red Puma wearing Kung Fu fanatic Shaolin Fantastic — the point is to go and go fast. The point is to move forward and do whatever it takes to get out of the Bronx, to move across the East River whether fists get in the way or parents stamp their angry foot down.
teaches us that nothing is more pertinent than words, and music, and movement, and love, and lust, and sisters, and style, and brotherhood, and family, and adopted family, and palpable, youthful, unstoppable energy! teaches us that forces count and feelings matter, with production value higher than a fingernail full of 70s Coke would get you, a soundtrack from Can, Grandmaster Flash and and an handsome cast, wrought in the melting pot of African West Indian Puerto Rican nineteen-seventies New York that leaps off where Scorcese’s Vinyl trickled to a halt.
In a vacuum there’s nothing left to do but start again. Start movements and relationships. Move! Love! Move more! Love more! With Brexit acting as a dark cloud over the ‘United’ Kingdom, unfit billionaire Donald Trump edging ever further in the US presidential race like the aggressive orange desert sun, rising crime rates and anti-human acts of terrorism across the world, think of the movements that will come out of the rubble. The kids will do what they always have done, which is simply, play music and dance. Together. Burn like Roman candles, dance like nobody’s watching and always have a goal in mind. Always work towards something. Always force change. Together. When the Bronx burns down, you build your own new world.
‘You don’t know what the fucking get down is?’ The Get Down is your new favorite Netflix series that teaches an urgent and unstoppable creation in the face of ruin.