Susan Granger’s review of “Pulse: A STOMP Odyssey” (Imax)
What goes bang-bong, clink-clang, whee-wooosh, ding-dong? It’s PULSE this summer’s most surprising IMAX movie. Neither a travelogue nor natural history chronicle, it’s an energetic, imaginative celebration of the pulsating global beat, exploring mystically connective drum and vocal rhythms on different continents around the globe. It’s like listening to the unifying heartbeat of the planet Earth. From the clever creators of the experimental musical STOMP, the story begins as a single percussionist open the window of his New York apartment and begins to tap. The camera pulls slowly back, revealing his neighbors eagerly joining in. Then its chant encompasses the human neighborhood. There are the bead-shaking South African Moremogolo Tswana Traditional Dancers, frenzied Kodo drummers of Japan, Winchester Cathedral bell-ringers in England, a clicking Flamenco dancer on a rooftop in Spain, Hindi natives going through decorated elephant religious rituals in India, American Indian Dance Theater in Colorado’s Red Rock Canyon, even underwater workers making music beneath the waters of the English Channel. And don’t forget the 200 Bayeza Cultural Dancers, wearing hard-hats, overalls and Wellington boots in the slums Johannesburg. Closer to home, there are two, quite different uniformed drum corps – the traditional Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps and the funky Jackie Robinson Steppers – stage a musical “duel” as they pass each other, going in opposite directions on the Brooklyn Bridge. Guiding us wordlessly through this global excursion is Keith “Wild Child” Middleton, a facially expressive hip-hopper who starred in STOMP on Broadway. That musical’s creators, Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, designed an urban collective that utilizes ordinary objects, like trash cans, brooms, boxes, basketballs and soda bottles, to capture the rhythms of the city – and the country – even on bicycles, tooting horns and clanking bells on an open country road. But this is not a giant screen version of STOMP; it’s a creation unto itself. Miraculously, it’s rhythmic but not noisy. Utilizing the photography of Christophe Lanzenberg and James Neiulhouse, the large-format IMAX screen is ideally suited to capture the images and allow you to feel the beat right down to your toe-tapping feet. Even the opening titles, consisting of a parade of fantastical vehicles, a promotional plug for Honda’s sponsorship, are fanciful and, therefore, memorable. If there’s any quibble, it’s with the formulaic (panning left-to-right) camera work which, at times, seems to undercut the naturalistic choreography. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Pulse: A STOMP Odyssey” is an exuberant, joyous 9, keeping you on the edge of your seat until Middleton signals the conclusion with the only spoken word in the entire film: an gentle “Shhhh….”
