Daisy Jones & The Six Review: The Sixties and Seventies the Big Bang of Rock | Amazon Prime Video
Cast: Sam Claflin, Riley Keough, Camila Morrone, Suki Waterhouse
Creator: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Daisy Jones & The Six is the new series or rather miniseries available on Prime Video from March 3 (the first 3 episodes immediately then weekly). The production enriches the catalog of the platform and it is easy to guess that it will end up in the Top Ten. Daisy Jones & The Six is the adaptation of Taylo Jenkins Reid’s novel and between ups and downs it’s a pleasant series to watch but, as always happens, the book was better! Within the series that chronicles the rise and fall of a musical band, there are 24 original songs. Daisy Jones & The Six is produced by Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter for Hello Sunshine and Brad Mendelsohn for Circle of Confusion. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber created the series based on the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, also serving as producer here. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin are the two protagonists.
Do you know that function that, every time we see streaming series, allows us to skip the theme song every time we see a new episode? That’s it, as we’ll explain in the Daisy Jones & The Six review, the new Prime Video series, streaming from March 3 with the first three episodes (with new episodes every Friday until March 24), this time you won’t. Because on the opening credits, we listened to the wonderful Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith. It is a historical piece of rock music of the late seventies. In a few minutes, that song already tells us everything, dictates the line, and makes us understand that we will immerse ourselves in a story set in that world and in that era. For those who know rock, it is a unique era. Daisy Jones & The Six is the story of an imaginary band, told as if it were true, between mockumentary and period fresco. A journey into the rock that captures the essence of music and an era but is told with a delicacy and melancholy unprecedented for a product of this type. It’s nostalgic and lyrical.
Daisy Jones & The Six Review: The Story Plot
If you’ve read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best seller, you better or worse know what to expect from the limited series Daisy Jones & The Six. A biopic about the birth, rise, and fall of a 1970s rock band, with interviews, testimonials, images, and archive videos, as already happened in Pistol on Disney+. With the typical rhythm of a series halfway between documentary and fictional, sometimes slow, sometimes fast and fun, the band’s songs as a soundtrack, and a good cast chosen to interpret the original characters. So far so good, right? In the sense: if you like the genre, you will like Daisy Jones & The Six, there is no doubt. But there is a bit: because looking at it, you must be willing to make a gigantic compromise in this case. Because everything you’ll see is a figment of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s imagination, because Daisy Jones never existed, as well as the Dunne brothers or Karen Sirko, the members of the fictitious band at the center of the story. A story that has nothing true and takes inspiration and inspiration here and there in the history of music and rock of the seventies.
Based on the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six chronicles the rise and precipitous fall of a famous, fictional, rock band. In 1977, Daisy Jones & The Six are on top of the world. The merit of the two leaders, two charismatic singers. Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) was a girl in love with rock and a rock star who treated her indelicately. So she decided that she would never be the same again. She chose a name for herself, and she decided that she would take her destiny into her own hands, pick up a guitar and start writing songs. Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) has always played with his band, The Dunne Brothers and then The Six. The two roads are destined to meet. And so, the new band came out of obscurity and became extremely successful. But, after a sold-out concert at Chicago’s Soldier Field, he disappears.
Daisy Jones & The Six Review and Analysis
Daisy Jones & The Six is a musical drama, but also a mockumentary. The fictional story, shot classically, alternates with interviews typical of a documentary, with the characters talking while looking into the camera and superimposed writing to show us who they are. It’s not the real characters but the actors themselves, made up as if time had passed, who lend themselves to the game. A bit like Tonya, but without that ironic and sarcastic tone which in that case served to tell the absurdity of the story. Here the mockumentary part serves to give a patina of truth to an imaginary story, to make us perceive that band invented by the pen of a novelist as a group that made rock history. Mission accomplished: after a few minutes we hear Daisy Jones & The Six as if it were a band that existed. And we are passionate about their stories.
The history of rock, we said. For those who love this music, Daisy Jones & The Six is an unmissable series. Because it immerses us immediately and irreversibly in that world, the sixties and seventies, which were the big bang of rock. We get lost along the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles, the historic street of the locals. We enter the legendary Whiskey a Go Go, where the Doors and the Byrds play, or the Troubadour, on Santa Monica Boulevard, made famous by Elton John. These are the years of the Who, Led Zeppelin, and Cream. And that name, Daisy Jones, evokes David Jones, which was David Bowie’s real name. For those who love rock, it is a story full of suggestions and references. Daisy Jones & The Six is an imaginary band, but inside you will find Fleetwood Mac, above all, but also Jefferson Airplane.
Fleetwood Mac and Jefferson Airplane had this. They were bands made up of men and women, which was unusual at the time. And this, especially in the history of Fleetwood Mac, meant that work was mixed with love, which made everything more magical, more intriguing. But also, as you can imagine, it is more complicated. What we like about Daisy Jones & The Six has to do with this. Compared to other rock movies about real artists, such as The Doors, or imaginary bands, such as the seminal Almost Famous, in which the point of view could only be male, here the story also reaches us from the point of view female view. We experience the story from two points of view: that of Billy, but also that of Daisy. And of the other women in the story: Karen,
All of this makes Daisy Jones Almost Famous with less testosterone and more sensitivity, or the quiet version of Vinyl. Or, if you like, the collective version of A Star Is Born. In the relationship between Billy and Daisy, we seem to see that between the protagonists of the classic that has returned to the screen several times, most recently with the vibrant interpretations of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. This more feminine, delicate way of telling a story that may seem to us already seen makes Daisy Jones & The Six something unique, different from the usual. The tone of the story is less epic, and glorious, but more lyrical, and intimist. The Prime Video series is nostalgic, romantic, dreamy, intriguing, and hypnotic. It must be followed by abandoning oneself to the story, immersing oneself in that world made up of recording studios, smoky clubs, guitars, and stages. To some, the pace may perhaps seem slow, but it is a choice linked to the particular tone that has been chosen to give to the story. Maybe there are a few too many stereotypes, like Billy’s alcoholism. But wanting to tell a world like that of rock, there is also that.
The history of rock was made by songs, by electric guitars. But also, from the bodies and faces of rock stars, magnetic presences capable of captivating the public also with their beauty and their charisma. And, even in this, Daisy Jones & The Six hits the mark, getting the protagonists right. Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games’ Finnick Odair, also seen in Enola Holmes and Peaky Blinders), who plays Billy, has the face of a rock star, and here he reaches a maturity that allows him to stage all the facets of his character. In those angular features, that square jaw, which hides an underlying fragility, Claflin seems predestined. Just as she is a predestined actress who gives body and face to Daisy: she is Riley Keough, daughter of Lisa Marie Presley: she is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla. Model and actress, she has the features of the King of Rock, blue eyes and a magnetic gaze, and an adherence to the role in which the echoes of her family history cannot be heard. She has a star aura, and it can’t be otherwise. She has the aura to be a perfect Daisy Jones.
Daisy Jones & The Six Review: The Last Words
As we told you in the Daisy Jones & The Six review, the series is the story of an imaginary band, told as if it were true, between mockumentary and period fresco. A journey into the rock that captures the essence of music and an era but is told with a delicacy and melancholy unprecedented for a product of this type. It is a nostalgic and lyrical series. The Bear, for example, is a series that focuses on a kitchen, yet we never see customers eating in the place. This is because the human aspect takes priority over everything. This is what Daisy Jones & the Six initially seems to lack. We want to rock n roll and torment, but without falling into the mundane, which the management has shown they can do. To conclude, Prime Video is still an interesting show, but we would also like to see other aspects of it.
