Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

GazerRise Fantastic!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Chris Knipp Scott Walker is an American composer and poet (original name Noel Scott Engel) who has lived in England for many years. Originally he was a handsome Sixties pop star who sang with the group The Walker Brothers in a "warm, sepulchral baritone" (as Eddie Cockrell puts it in 'Variety') that made young girls scream and, in England, was more popular than the Beatles. After a couple of albums the group disbanded (though reuniting for a while in the Seventies), and Scott went solo. Gradually over many years, moving haltingly at first from covers of other people's songs to increasingly complex and personal compositions in albums a decade apart, Walker has established a reputation as a unique musical figure focused on recording, not public performance, which the screaming girls taught him to hate. His haunting, surreal, emotionally demanding pieces, all the way back to the Sixties, have influenced Radiohead and The Cocteau Twins. Vocally admired by Sting, Brian Eno, and David Bowie (executive producer here), he receives on screen testimonials from Ute Lemper, Jarvis Cocker, Lulu, Marc Almond, Damon Albarn, Allison Goldfrapp, and Gavin Friday.Kijak's film is interesting enough to attract new converts to this cult artist. It's also a pleasure to watch because it's so well made. It's convincing, elegant, revealing, seamless, and frequently quite beautiful.The film begins by teasing viewers with the historically reclusive nature of the man ever since he gave up public performance some time in the Seventies. Then it springs its bombshell: Scott has consented to a lengthy interview for the film. '30 Century Man' is not so much a life as a life-in-art. We learn little about personal matters such as depression and a drinking problem but everything about his style and imagination and the stories of the individual albums. The beauty of the film is as a portrait of musical evolution describing changing ensembles, recording methods, and moods from album to album, the latest many years apart. It's also the story of an artist influencing other artists, rather than prancing before the public.Before we get to that, there's enough footage of TV performances to show that The Walker Brothers (who were neither brothers nor named Walker) were a conventional cute singing package. M.O.R. slop, you might say, especially considering their peak year of 1965 was the time when Dylan released 'Highway 61 Revisited.' On his own, Scott wanted to do Jacques Brel, the angst-ridden, sweaty French songwriter. He did Brel smoothly, in English, with that mellifluous baritone of his.Later when the solo compositions emerge, he moves further and further toward art compositions with horror-show moodiness and highly crafted sound landscapes. The latest songs some say are not songs at all but something else, haunting tone poems with words born, Scott says, out of a life of bad dreams. Some of the images used to illustrate later compositions, however, still put one in a Seventies mood, though the dreamy floating patterns, colors, and texts have nothing dated about them. Maybe even the mature Scott Walker style grows out of a strain of Seventies English rock impressionism. (That may partly explain Walker's remaining in the UK, but he was also in love with Europe through its films.) The lyrics, often floated dreamily on screen with lines in space, are occasionally quite strange.One suave passage traces key songs from all Walker's albums through time to show he did interesting work even early in his solo career. While the music is playing multiple screens show musicians listening and commenting on the work.Though the film doesn't say so, Walker's lyrics from the Eighties on, when the albums became less frequent, are stronger and freer.'Cripple fingers hit the muezzin yells/some had Columbine some had specks/Cripple fingers hit the rounds of shells/some had clinging vine some had specksThe good news you cannot refuse/The bad news is there is no news' ('Patriot,' a single, 1995)Excerpts we hear (and partly see) show Walker is adventurous and extravagant (but a deft and calmly focused director) in studio orchestrations, using lots of strings and building a large wooden box to get just the right percussion sound. Another time a percussionist must hit a large slab of meat. Doing the music for Leos Carax's film 'Pola X,' he has a large studio full of loud percussionists. Classical musicians are instructed to play violins to imitate the sound of German planes coming in to bomb English towns--not an easy day's work. It's all very intriguing, suggesting a personal musical world that's scary, but still welcomes you to come in.

Julio Bonet I had no idea who Mr. Scott Walker was until I came across this incredible and honest portrayal of the most enigmatic musician ever. The fact that he has inspired the numerous (and eclectic selection) artists that contribute to this doc represents the power of his musical genius. I highly recommend everyone checks out this doc; you'll leave the theatre/your TV screen, anxious to collect and absorb all his albums.Kijak presents himself as an incredible interviewer and director just as much as Walker actually proves to be quite open to allowing the cameras into his world.Moving, unforgettable, and unique. A MUST-SEE!

Ingrid Boulton (Ingrid-13) I have been a fan of Scott Walker's work since I was a girl and have continued to follow his work, following all the strange twists and turns his career went on and I have been following this film carefully since I heard it was being made and when I finally saw it I was mesmerized. Scott is so present in the film and the music is given the priority, not his personal life. I think it's a real achievement to get someone like Scott to open up and the film seemed so intimate without dispelling any of the great mystery that swirls around him, which is part of his mystique, it's part of why we love him, in addition to his amazing voice and music! I happen to like a lot of the artists in the film and thought their impressions of his music were touching, honest and sometimes funny and insightful...but they never detract, and Scott is really the center of gravity in a film that presents his music in such a visually stunning way, I can't imagine anyone not falling under its spell. I recommend it for any fan of Scott Walker's music and any fan of music at all, he's one of the greats that needs to be fully recognized the world over, and I think this film will help that happen.

seawalker There is a great bit in "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" in which self confessed Scott Walker obsessive/fan Marc Almond talks about his reaction to hearing "Tilt" for the first time.Marc explains that he was invited to an exclusive play of what was, at that time, the new album. He took his seat, with many other people, in reverential silence and then the event began. After listening to a couple of tracks, Marc turned to his friend and said"This is terrible. This a really bad record. How embarrassing is this?"(OK. For anybody who knows the film off by heart, and I'm sure that there will be a few, those are perhaps not the exact words that Marc Almond used, but I think I am pretty close.)It was a great scene. A crucial scene, in fact, because prior to that we had been treated to a veritable galaxy of famous talking heads rhapsodising over Scott Walker's genius, his innovativeness, the depth and scope of his recordings and his progression away from anything resembling traditional pop music to something more akin to avant guard or even performance art. The pop singer Lulu kept it simple. She just wanted to know if Scott was still "gorgeous". Fair enough, I thought. (She toured with him in the Sixties when he was in the Walker Brothers.)From the snippets of music in the film, and they were only snippets, I am not at all sure if I like Scott Walker's later music or not. I might... because it is like nothing you will ever hear, and I quite like the idea of that.Therein lies the mystery of Scott Walker. His current work is impossible to pigeonhole and you cannot assume that you will like his current work based on his past work, because it is so completely different. I did like the Walker Brothers singles. I did like those early great, soaring, orchestrated solo records, some of which Julian Cope dismisses in the film as "M.O.R slop". Above all Scott Walker was, and still is, a brilliant vocalist.But about the film...This is a really good documentary. It's the full story from jobbing bass player on the Sunset Strip, teeny bop stardom with the Walker Brothers, solo success, solo and critical confusion, solo failure and extreme solo experimentation. There are lots and lots of clips, and some rare archive interview footage including Scott on mid 80's yoof show "The Tube", which is kind of hilarious in itself because of the dreadful video clip that was made to promote the single he had out at that time. (No idea what that was called.) Current interview footage shows Scott as shy, self effacing and (shock horror!) kind of normal. He also laughs a lot when recording, which was a bit of a surprise.Good film.Interestingly enough, the ear worm working away at my brain when I left the cinema was "Make It Easy On Yourself". Hell, there's nothing like a good pop tune. Maybe the most radical thing Scott could do now would be to record a pop album. Now that would be shocking...