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You have to believe she was magic

• The Timaru Herald
• 12 Aug 2022
• Kylie Klein Nixon kylie.klein-nixon@stuff.co.nz

Olivia NewtonJohn as a goddess in Xanadu. How did she ever end up in a film with Gene Kelly and Michael Beck, below?

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This week, we saw a lot of pictures of Olivia Newton-John as Sandy from Grease. Newton-John, 73, died on Tuesday after a decades-long battle with breast cancer, and that role is probably her most famous. If you loved that film, fair play, there are some bangers on that soundtrack.

But if you really want to remember Newton-John at her most glorious, her most radiant, then forget that 50s pastiche with its grubby innuendo and awkward sexual politics, watch Xanadu instead.

Now, there’s a chance you might never even have heard of this film. It’s been all but forgotten since it came out in 1980 – mostly because in no world could it be considered a good film. But don’t let that put you off.

In it, Newton-John plays one of the Nine Muses – Terpsichore, aka Kira, the goddess of dance and chorus – who with her sisters, is inexplicably brought to life from a mural on LA’s Venice Beach.

Once alive and high-kicking she inspires struggling, heartbreakingly gormless artist Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) and his pal, 40s film icon Gene Kelly, to open a roller disco, because why the hell not?

Romantic shenanigans ensue, but poor old Terpsichore/Kira cannot stay on this mortal plane. Alas, she must return to the natural home of all Grecian metaphors, a grubby graffiti wall on the boardwalk.

Luckily, her dad is Zeus, king of the Gods, who has a soft spot for falling in love with mortals you shouldn’t be falling in love with.

After a bit of pleading, he sends Kira back to her all-singing, all-roller skating life with Sonny, and they roll off into the sunset, Kelly in tow, to live happily every after.

Even if you haven’t seen it you can imagine there are plenty of ways this film can go wrong and bless all 95 minutes of it, it manages all of them.

But also imagine, if you will, you are a slightly nerdy, fantasy-obsessed 10-year-old, stuck in suburban 80s New Zealand.

Now, imagine one day your mum takes you to the local school hall to see a cheap movie, and that movie is a disco-themed musical urban-fantasy about a roller-skating Greek goddess and her mortal lover, featuring Gene Kelly, and some of the best music to come out of the early-80s by ELO and your secret girl crush Olivia Newton-John.

To say it was life-changing would be a gross understatement – I still sometimes daydream about roller skating in leg warmers.

I know that my memories of it being the greatest film ever made are a 10-year-old’s memories. I’ve watched it again as an adult and I can see all the film’s faults.

The script feels half finished, the characters are wafer thin and nothing about the fantasy world it’s trying to sell you makes any sense – why are there Greek goddesses on roller skates?

Why is Gene Kelly in this film, and why is he the only person who seems to know what the hell is going on?

I also know it was so badly received when it came out, it inspired the first of the Razzies, Hollywood’s tongue-in-cheek awards for the worst of the year’s films.

But what Xanadu lacks in craft it more than makes up for in style, and most crucially, music.

If any muses inspired director Robert Greenwald during the making of this thing, it was in casting the semi-divine Newton-John and her sun-kissed, guileless, girl-next-door beauty, as a goddess, and pairing her ethereal Mezzo-soprano, with the wild electro rock of ELO.

The title track, Xanadu, alone would have been enough to kick this soundtrack in to crucial classic territory, but it also includes the absolute soulstealer Magic, which to this day can transport me to the Elysian Fields of 80s nostalgia like no other tune can.

‘‘You have to believe we are magic. Nothing can stand in our way,’’ she sang, in that sultry way she had.

‘‘And if all your hopes survive destiny will arrive. I’ll bring all your dreams alive for you.’’

Far more than The One that I Want, or the mawkish Hopelessly Devoted To You, the winsome, evocative, Magic not only sums up a time and place, and a talent like Newton-John’s, but also what the movies did for this awkward tweenager back then, and never more so than on that summer afternoon in a Stokes Valley school hall.

Vale, Goddess, you will be missed.

Why are there Greek goddesses on roller skates? Why is 40s movie icon Gene Kelly in this film, and why is he the only person who seems to know what the hell is going on?

Xanadu is available to rent from iTunes, GooglePlay and YouTube.

 

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