Unless you pay zero interest to the news, you would have surely heard of this year’s Oscars. The winners, the losers, the pizza delivery guy, the selfie, and Jared Leto. That Jared Leto is talented comes to no surprise to millions of Thirty Seconds to Mars fans, or those of us who at some point during our teens watched My So Called Life. If you haven’t home-dyed your hair red, à la Angela Chase, over the bathroom sink, you haven’t lived. Ah, the smell of cheap dye, throwing your flower print backpack over one shoulder, having no words and only teary eyes hearing about Kurt Cobain.
While it unfairly ran for a single season, My So Called Life managed to acutely reflect the ups & downs of teenage life. A great TV drama, about longing to be “someone” in the school’s corridors, about how your friends are the most important human beings in your life, how you don’t get your parents, how they don’t get you, and about how you were invisible until your very own Jordan Catalano laid eyes on you.
Move a few years forward and Jared Leto has appeared in, by choice, a limited number of films, becoming increasingly good with every performance. As a musician, he joined his drummer brother, Shannon Leto, and bassist Tomo Miličević, to form Thirty Seconds To Mars, a band that has sold millions of music records over the course of 16 years.
Thirty Seconds To Mars had worldwide success with creepy and emo-iconic The Kill (Bury Me) in 2006. Several hit singles followed, and thanks to their international fan base, the Echelon, they sell out concerts wherever they go.
Jared Leto is not just talented: he makes writers like myself abuse the prefix “multi” when labelling him with that adjective. One of his most recent pieces of work is ARTIFACT, a documentary that started off as a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of their third album. It became something quite different when EMI, their record label, decided to sue them for 30 million dollars.
It is not just a documentary on what lies behind a music album, but a revealing film on how the music industry works. While we all know how the stakes have changed, with piracy and digital downloads redefining the music industry, the eye-opening fact comes when realising how the talent of an individual or a band, their work, thoughts and ideas, very easily become something that doesn’t belong to them anymore. I don’t want to give much away but, to me, it was a highly enjoyable piece of work, moving and, at times, angering. Ultimately, watching Leto and the band go through the legal ordeal – with all of the opposed interests, beliefs and feelings that arise – allows the audience to witness the twisted reality of being a successful music act.
Now, back to post-Oscars talk, and sticking to the wonder that is Jared Leto – notice how not once did I mention anything to do with his ridiculously glorious hair – I can’t help but get annoyed every time an interviewer asks him to choose between his band and his film career, or whether now that he has succeeded in the film industry, will he focus on that, as if being the lead singer of Thirty Seconds To Mars is some sort of middle-ground job. Jared Leto seems to be hyper-creative, well versed in the arts, inspired and capable of shining in multiple disciplines. Why is that so weird? Are we allowed to be good at only one thing?
ARTIFACT is available on iTunes.
Photo & video: Facebook.com/ArtifactTheFilm
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