Beyond the Multiplex

March 23, 2006 | Stephen Woolley believes he has solved a 37-year-old murder mystery, and the world is pretty much divided into two kinds of people: Those who will be utterly fascinated by "Stoned," Woolley's film about the 1969 death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, and those who couldn't possibly care less.

You don't have to have been alive or conscious in the summer of 1969 to care about Brian Jones. To a certain breed of rock 'n' roll guy (and an ever-larger tribe of rock 'n' roll gals), whether young or old, Jones is an immortal, the first and in many ways the purest of rock gods. As Woolley, 53, explained to me during our telephone interview, Jones was pretty much the guy who invented rock-star flamboyance and decadence, as well as rock's first true guitar hero.

Jones' career was short and he has almost been obliterated within the history of his own band, which has soldiered on without him through four decades of sold-out stadium shows. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards long ago stopped seeming satanic or messianic. They've become veteran showmen like their blues heroes, rocking into middle age and beyond, but Jones is perennially trapped in the glamour and danger of swinging London, a symbol of the 1960s at its most vibrant and treacherous. In one direction, his legacy leads to ax legends like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page; in another to a long list of rock martyrs: Jimi, Janis, Morrison, Cobain. (In many ways, Gus Van Sant's Cobain film, "Last Days," is the same movie as "Stoned," only without any dialogue you can understand.)

On the other hand, there were plenty of people alive in 1969 who didn't give a crap about Brian Jones or the entire generation he allegedly represented, and that to some extent is the subject of "Stoned." I found it an often exciting film, as lurid and flawed as its subject, but full of arresting moments and images. (Stephanie Zacharek will review it in more depth tomorrow.) In a crazy-busy week, that's far from the only worthwhile movie. We've also got a Belgian film of uncommon craft and intensity that won last year's big prize at Cannes, along with an improbable documentary about life, and hairdressing, in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

"Stoned": The anarchic goat-god of the '60s, laid to rest at last?

Listen, there's no way to discuss Woolley's "Stoned" without pretty much giving away its general hypothesis about Brian Jones' death. So members of the spoiler police need to move on to some other content provider. No, seriously, I mean it; I don't want a single how-could-you-do-this-to-me e-mail. I promise not to discuss exactly what happens at the climax of Woolley's film, when Jones drowns in the pool of his Sussex estate, the same house that once belonged to A.A. Milne and had statues of Christopher Robin, Pooh, Piglet, etc., in the garden. (Yes! Brian Jones died in the House at Pooh Corner!) But you're going to get the idea.

Fine. If you're still here, you may well know that conspiracy theories about Jones' death have floated almost since his funeral -- which Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, for reasons debated to this day, did not attend. Woolley isn't buying any of these more baroque notions. After years of investigation, and turning up two witnesses hardly anyone else has spoken to, he argues that Jones (played in the film by Leo Gregory) was murdered, or killed half-accidentally, on the night of July 3, 1969, after an altercation with a contractor who'd been working for him and to some extent had become his friend.

This idea isn't new either. The contractor, a man named Frank Thorogood (played in the film by the terrific English actor Paddy Considine), supposedly confessed to the crime in 1993, when he himself was dying. But Woolley's account, whether you buy it or not, has more filled-in details and a more plausible chain of chronology and causality than any previous version of how and why Thorogood may have killed Brian Jones.

"Stoned" fills in some of the history of Jones' life and career up to that point; especially his debauched adventures with the legendary Anita Pallenberg (Monet Mazur), who was first his girlfriend and then Richards', and the Stones' infamous drug-fueled visit to Morocco. Although Richards (Ben Whishaw) and Jagger (Luke de Woolfson) appear in the film, they're minor background characters, and viewers in search of a by-the-numbers biopic about the band's early years will have to wait for an authorized version, which is to say until hell freezes over.

About half the film is focused on Jones' final weeks at Cotchford Farm in Sussex, after Jagger and Richards had ejected him from the band. He was surrounded there by a small coterie: his post-Pallenberg girlfriend Anna Wohlin (Tuva Novotny), Stones chauffeur and all-around wrangler Tom Keylock (David Morrissey), Thorogood, and sometimes Keylock's mistress, a nurse named Janet Lawson (Amelia Warner). It was this group of distinctly unfamous people, Woolley felt sure, who could unlock the original rock-star mystery.

Woolley has been laying the groundwork for "Stoned" and researching the Jones case for years, but he hasn't been slacking off in his professional life. Although this is his directing debut, he's far from a novice filmmaker. He's best known for producing Neil Jordan's films, working on everything from "The Company of Wolves" to "The Crying Game" to "Interview With the Vampire" and Jordan's most recent film, "Breakfast on Pluto." Woolley's other producing credits include "Waterland," "Backbeat," "Welcome to Woop Woop," "Fever Pitch" and "Little Voice." He spoke to me from his production office in England.

Next page: Mick and Keith "boring looking"?