Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright is a perfect fit for the absurdist antics of art pop’s most elusive duo in this stranger-than-fiction documentary
“They are a band who you can look up on Wikipedia and know nothing!” So says long-term Sparks fan Julia Marcus, just one voice amid a dizzying array of interviewees (from Sex Pistol Steve Jones to Weird Al Jankovic via Flea, Jane Wiedlin, Neil Gaiman and many, many more) wrestling with the stranger-than-fiction tale of one of pop’s most influentially indefinable enigmas. Charting a course from experimental American art-rock projects to breakthrough UK chart hits, outlandish film dreams (some realised, some not) and insanely challenging concert tours (a different album every night!), Edgar Wright’s energetic ode to Ron and Russell Mael marries exhaustively researched archaeology with the sugar-rush thrill of a heady teenage fan letter.
Best of all, it manages both to unpack and preserve the carefully cultivated air of mystery that surrounds the duo, leaving the viewer with a renewed admiration for their century-straddling decades of reinvention, while still throwing enough “true or false” curveballs to leave you wondering whether the whole thing isn’t an elaborate work of fiction.