No one could accuse Jim Hosking of making another run-of-the-mill music biopic, because whatever Ebony & Ivory is, it’s certainly not that. The film’s synopsis on paper has all the elements to make a textbook, dare we say heartwarming, musical fairytale – envisaging a hypothetical meeting of musical icons Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney as they collaborate on their ballad of racial unity at McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre home. You couldn’t be blamed for expecting some cosy Britcom antics, peppered with a couple Wings tracks and some soulful shots of the Atlantic, but that’s not exactly what the director of The Greasy Strangler had in mind…
Out of the gate, we’re quite literally spun into Hosking’s parallel world, with a shot that pans between our two leads and the shortening stretch of Scottish beach that separates them. Even this initial shot has an unstable quality to it; the swing from Gil Gex’s Wonder to Sky Elobar’s McCartney is just that bit too quick and the close ups are just that bit too close. Not to mention that we’re watching Stevie Wonder crashing out of the sea in a wooden row boat and trudging up the beach, cane and scarlet suitcases in tow, all through an immovable Paul McCartney’s eyes. It’s all a bit odd, and it sets the tone of the film perfectly. Neither of the Real Music Legends are ever mentioned by name and are instead characterised with a series of caricature-like allusions and traits. Paul frequently professes to being “the cute one that all the girls went mad for” and is semi-constantly surrounded with the breaded, vegetarian ready meals his wife has developed. Stevie likes to remind his host that he’s the man who got the trombone to sound sexy and spends portions of the film glaring at McCartney through a pair of unsettling, milky-lensed eyes. But that’s about where the pair’s similarities to their real-life counterparts end. Gex and Elobar look and sound about as much like Wonder and McCartney as they do one another, and their interactions have more in common with stop-motion plasticine than any kind of realism. The film is refreshingly uninterested with the real world, let alone history.
As to be expected from Hosking and his troupe, Ebony & Ivory has the inherently unsettling quality of a sweaty fever dream. From smiles that never quite reach the eyes, to uncanny puppets and some extensive shingle beach nudity, there’s an erratic sense of unease. The film is indulgently aimless, perhaps excessively so, and at times this staccato pacing can make it hard to fully commit to the vision. By the time we reach the long-expected conclusion and the pair finally commit to collaborating on the song, the conclusion is reached with decidedly less fanfare than the wild goose chase would suggest, or we would like. Despite this, there’s enough here to keep your attention for the neat hour and a half runtime. There’s a healthy number of strong one liners and the rubbery quality of Gex and Elobar’s performances are transfixing. The overall look of the film, and the lighting especially, is admirable and all the elements really come together for the zanier, surrealist sequences scattered throughout.
Like a ‘dooby wooby’ fuelled night spent caught between a Dr Suess book and the Wings wikipedia page, Ebony & Ivory is a dynamic and sometimes indecipherable fever dream, trapped in a Scottish Cottage. Although it’s lacking some fine-tuning and perhaps a firmer hand at points, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Jim Hosking’s parallel universe McCartney and Wonder.
Author: Tilly Holt [she/her]
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 