TMS Movie Review: Catching Fire- The Story of Anita Pallenberg

(Magnolia Pictures)

Being invested in the tales of women offstage in rock history for so long means I probably already know most of the details when a new documentary drops. A problem with biopics and documentaries is a lot of them are vanity projects that just scratch the surface of the subject’s legacy [like how Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black is being accused of currently]. What will they leave out? What will they keep in? Who is involved with the production? Who disowns the final edit? With Alexis Bloom & Svetlana Zill’s recent doc on Rolling Stones muse, girlfriend and champion, Anita Pallenberg, I was glad to see there weren’t any cookie cutter highlights most classic rock fans are all aware of. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg has a lot of the usual documentary structure. Talking heads from various people in her life, narration to provide her voice, montages of footage and photos. But it doesn’t glamourize its controversial subject too much or point fingers blaming others for her bad decisions. Everyone comes off looking good and looking bad. Everyone receives sympathy and criticism.

Anita, who died in 2017 at age 75 after a history of Hep C, has her personal manuscript read here by movie star Scarlett Johansson. We see a young, vibrant German-Italian woman rise to notoriety by getting into modeling in the early 1960s, so she can travel to more exciting cities like Manhattan and London; to acting in artsy European films like Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) as a creative outlet. In between all this, she gets her most press for dating Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones in 1965-67, and leaving him for his bandmate Keith Richards, whom she’s with until 1980. What we already know about Anita is a lot of people have a lot of different opinions on her. To some, she is an interesting woman who shouldn’t be pigeonholed into just being labeled a muse [even if she did inspire ‘Angie’]. Some think she was a terrible girlfriend and an even worse mother. Others think she was the life of the party and the best influence on the Stones artistically.

(Magnolia Pictures)

While there are a handful of commentators featured throughout Catching Fire—such as popstar and fellow Stones girlfriend Marianne Faithfull and actor Jake Weber—most of Anita’s life is told through Keith, their kids Marlon and Angela, and Anita’s personal notes. Fans were worried about Bloom & Zill’s feature being either a hit piece or a fluff piece, but the person who comes out here looking the worst is actually Keith. Both parents have their share of questionable choices, including exposing children to drugs. But son Marlon goes out of his way to call his father out for choosing to not leave the band’s 1976 tour when the third, youngest child of the family tragically died of SIDS at only two months old; as well as conveniently having a music related obligation when Anita and the kids might generally need him. Despite this, all four family members insist they still love and forgive each other.

As a longtime rockstar and muse connoisseur, a lot of the context of Catching Fire wasn’t new to me. I’ve heard of Brian allegedly being abusive and Anita confirming she and Mick Jagger secretly had an affair while co-starring in Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970) wasn’t a shock. All the same, it’s nice to hear Anita’s side of the story so many years later, even in a slightly abridged edition. Though she is a fascinating woman, Anita Pallenberg’s life might still be niche enough for only lovers of the Stones, classic rock or the 1960s-1970s [like me] to appreciate on screen.