The music biopic has almost turned into Heat magazine for the film industry. Another day, another character's idiosyncracies, personal tragedies and failures lay open raw for the public's viewing pleasure.Nick Moran's take on Joe Meek, the producer behind the Tornadoes biggest hit, TELSTAR (giving this film it's title) portrays a man with unwavering belief in his own genius who goes potty with alarming rapidity as his insular world collapses around his ears. What you think of the film depends on what you know of Meek and his work.
Con O'Neill is certainly mesmerising in the role of the flamboyant producer, although there are mutters in the audience that he is too old for the role. Still, he manages to flip from pathetic to monstrous to completely off his rocker extremely well, creating sympathy for a man who slowly pushed away the people in his life with a terrifying temper and the consuming obsession with his gorgeous protege Heinz (superbly played by JJ Feild).
As we are taken on Meek's spiral of self-destruction that leads to his suicide it's hard to grasp what Moran's intention was - to explain the workings of a creative genius or- what seems to come out of the film- to demonstrate that Meek was actually a sad and somewhat strange, lonely man who was handy with electronics and rode to success on the coat tails of his more talented co-composer Geoff Goddard.
A strong supporting cast (although Kevin Spacey's Major Banks' accent gets so "stiff-upper lip British" as to verge on farcical) make this a compelling watch but one can't help but feel that if Moran had wished to remind us of a unique brilliance, it's not been achieved here. Louise Steggals
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