The Get Down: Where style gets in the way of substance

WITH a $120 million price tag and Baz Luhrmann attached, there was never any doubt that The Get Down was going to be an epic tale.

REVIEW

WITH a $120 million price tag and Baz Luhrmann attached, there was never any doubt that Netflix’s six-episode series The Get Down was going to be an epic tale.

Set in 1977 in the Bronx, it’s a rose-coloured glasses tale of the beginnings of hip-hop. This isn’t a realistic, gritty story of cultural disadvantage, social unrest and the drug trade, it’s a Luhrmann-esque, musical flashback to a colourful era.

Following the hopes and dreams of orphan Zeke, a high-schooler with an unrequited love, he’s a lyrical genius, an urban poet slamming down rhymes with purpose and insight. Zeke and his friends chance upon the underground world of a nascent musical style, what we now know as hip hop and rap, then roughly described as having a wordsmith complement your manipulated beats.

To cement its street cred, The Get Down counts Grandmaster Flash (also a character in the show) and Nas among its producers. Nas also wrote much of Zeke’s raps, so you know that it is tight.

The Get Down kicks off with a 90-minute-long pilot episode directed by Luhrmann. And because it is a Luhrmann project, there’s a frenetic energy to many scenes with his signature camera style zigzagging from composition to composition. In some instances, this whirligig works, conveying a visceral impression on the viewer, almost transporting you there.

If you’re not a Luhrmann fan, this kaleidoscopic approach to filmmaking can easily put you off.

No matter what you think of Luhrmann’s style-over-substance approach, his films have always been aesthetically polished and distinct. But that’s not something you can say about The Get Down, which is more like style getting in the way of substance.

Where style gets in the way of substance.

The schizophrenic first episode directed by Luhrmann is all over the place and is in serious need of a better editor. It erratically swings between filmic styles and plot lines that shouldn’t be cut together. It’s a total mess.

It also takes about 75 minutes to get to where it’s going. If you were patient and sifted through the drudgery of the protracted set-up, you were rewarded with a powerfully kinetic sequence in the last 15 minutes. It pulses through you and will have you on your feet.

But those moments of greatness are rare, which is a real shame because the central story with Zeke is genuinely affecting and has a lot of heart. The young actor playing him, Justice Smith, is also very charismatic and has great screen presence.

It’s just The Get Down is mired by superfluous and uninteresting subplots including one involving a drug kingpin named Annie, a character that can only be described as an exercise in grotesquerie.

The second episode, one not directed by Luhrmann, is more taut and coherent but still suffers from being too languid in parts and too frenzied in others.

The world built by Luhrmann is warm, celebratory and inviting, one that should make you want to stay, if it wasn’t such a chore. It had all the right elements and it’s a series you really want to like but ultimately, The Get Down is a let-down.

The Get Down is streaming on Netflix now.

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At times, the energy is pulsating.