The Beat Beneath My Feet

By Joanna Orland

A formulaic concept at its core, The Beat Beneath My Feet impresses with its unique voice and endearingly catchy songs.  The film puts a new spin on a classic cinematic premise — awkward boy meets grumpy older man, who used to have a life full of promise, but now has a haggard soul.  While the boy character originally seeks help of older man, the film ends with older man’s life being profoundly changed by boy.  This has been seen time and time again on the big screen, but none until now have starred Luke Perry as a faded rockstar who’s faked his own death, alongside newcomer Nicholas Galitzine in a star-making performance as Tom.  

The performances are outstanding.  Luke Perry plays Steve, the disabled and faded star who spent his youth as a 90’s guitar hero, reminiscent of Kurt Cobain.  Steve blames himself for the death of his three-year-old son, is unable to forgive himself, faking his own death and finding himself living in a council flat in London, neighbouring Tom and his mother.  Perry gives a minimal performance, downplaying the rockstar persona of Steve, and focusing on the human aspect of the character.  His guilt, grief, and fondness for Tom are at the heart of his portrayal, which is gripping in every scene.

Nicholas Galitzine is clearly one to watch.  Galitzine’s characterization of Tom is fascinating, but it’s his musical talent that takes this performance to the next level.  In the Q&A which followed the Raindance Film Festival screening, director John Williams discussed how the audition process for Tom included actors performing a rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep“, as he felt it embodied the character, and would also test the actors’ skills in relation to the emotively awkward lyrical content.  A quick Google search later, and here is Nicholas Galitzine performing a cover of “Creep“ on his Soundcloud page.

This brings us to the third star of The Beat Beneath My Feet – the music.  Song and score composition is credited to Geoff Jackson, Phillip Jewson, and Paul Cartledge.  Nicholas Galitzine brings these songs to life in his performance, but director John Williams does something even more impressive with them, creating music video segments within the film.  It’s blatant that Williams comes from a music video background, having directed videos for artists including Coldplay and Radiohead.  His use of live action and animation, melded seamlessly, is visually stunning and a delight to watch within this already joyous film.

Ironically, the only criticism I have for this film is related to these musical numbers.  The first number sees Tom sing about being a loser, visualizing a loser motif at every turn.  As this is visually minimalist compared to later music video segments, I took this as merely an insight into Tom’s mind, not expecting any further elaboration on the music video concept.  The second number seems to come out of nowhere, as it appears so much later in the film, breaking the pace without warning, drastically changing the film from comedy/drama to musical.  After the second musical number, the following numbers feature at a much better pace, allowing the audience to grasp the musical idea, which is wonderful in its concept.  It’s just a shame they don’t feature more in the first half of the film, to help the consistency and pacing of this absolute gem.