A New Entry to the Top 5

When Stephen Frears’ deliciously funny “High Fidelity” goes to video, you’ll find it on the romantic comedy shelf. It gives an edgy twist to a feel-good tradition that extends from Tracy and Hepburn to Hanks and Ryan.

But the film’s true spiritual home is on the rock ‘n’ roll shelf--alongside works devoted to Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Spinal Tap.

On the list of best rock movies ever, it’s No. 5 with a bullet.

What distinguishes “High Fidelity” from the other great rock movies is that it’s not about musicians. From “Don’t Look Back” and “A Hard Day’s Night” to “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle,” rock ‘n’ roll movies have been about them (the stars).

“High Fidelity” is about us (the fans).

It’s a point that film critics seem to miss.

I’ve been waiting years to find a screen hero who represents me. And then all I read in even the positive film reviews about “High Fidelity” is how Rob Gordon, the John Cusack character, is an “overgrown slacker” . . . a “hapless hero” . . . even “indulgent, cynical and narcissistic.”

Am I alone here--or aren’t there lots of us who see a touch of ourselves in Rob Gordon? He’s an intense Chicago record store owner who seems to have found only one certainty in life--that vinyl is still the best way to listen to music.

Everything else, especially relationships, is a mystery.

Sure, Gordon is a little cranky and self-absorbed at times, but he’s going through a never-ending romantic crisis--so cut him some slack.

The trait that ties Gordon to pop fans is that he sees everything in life through the filter of his favorite records.

When judging people, it’s what they like, not what they are like that matters, Gordon says in one of the defining moments of the film, which is a beautifully accurate translation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel.

There are lots of easy ways to stereotype people: from the cars they drive to their area codes. But nothing quite tells as much about someone as taste in music.

Tell me now: If someone informs you that his favorite act of all time is Gino Vanelli, wouldn’t you think the guy is a couple of steps slow?

One of pop music’s most addictive qualities is how it serves as an emotional shorthand. Whatever your feeling, from euphoria to paralyzing insecurity, you can find a song to express it.

How many times have we heard rock stars, from John Lennon to Kurt Cobain, describe music as an emotional life raft? It was the one thing, in those confusing days of youth, that helped these artists define their feelings or realize that others shared the same longings or doubts.

To varying degrees, pop fans have shared that same bond with records. That’s why music is so effective in movies.

One of the most memorable things about David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” was the way he used a tension-filled Roy Orbison song, “In Dreams,” to convey a character’s whacked-out sensibilities.

In “High Fidelity,” director Frears uses snippets of more than 50 songs, but two moments stand out.

First, the sudden euphoria of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” when Gordon learns some crucial information about his ex-girlfriend’s subsequent celibacy. And we understand instantly why love blossoms when a shy record store employee sees the sparkle in a customer’s eyes as he plays her one of his favorite records, Stiff Little Fingers’ “Suspect Device.”

It’s not just showing off when Gordon’s cohorts (brilliantly played by the ultra-aggressive Jack Black and the timorous Todd Louiso) challenge each other with Top 5 lists or debate the virtues of competing versions of “Little Latin Lupe Lu.” They are seeing how close they can come to some personal truths.

Movie Captures a Universal Spirit

While the lists are fiercely defended, however, they are clearly negotiable. When Rob Gordon spots an intoxicatingly sexy female singer crooning Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way,” he suddenly decides the song wasn’t all that bad after all. He certainly doesn’t want his taste to keep him from getting to know the singer--or even playing her compact disc in his vinyl citadel.

Frears and screenwriters D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, Scott Rosenberg and Cusack did an effective job of transforming the setting of Hornby’s novel from London to Chicago and of maintaining a vague sense of timeliness about the story and the characters. The atmosphere of the record shop may be in-crowd, but the spirit is universal.

That’s a quality that “High Fidelity” shares with the other great rock films--the way music is just a bridge to a wider subject.

D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 “Don’t Look Back” wasn’t compelling just because it featured Bob Dylan in concert, but because it captured the essence of what it must be like to be in the absolute center of a cultural revolution.

Richard Lester’s Beatles vehicle “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964, by contrast, enabled us to explore our fantasies of what fun stardom must be. Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap,” a 1984 satire about a fictional group, allowed us to laugh at the absurdity of that stardom.

The final film in our Top 5 is Julien Temple’s “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.” A 1980 pseudo-documentary about the Sex Pistols, it mocked us with the audacity of rock stardom. (Temple tries to tell the Sex Pistols story again in his new film, “The Filth and the Fury,” but like the ill-fated Sex Pistols reunion tour, it can’t compete with its own history. “Filth” is more serious, but “Swindle” better conveys the anarchy that made the Pistols important.)

The vintage films on the Top 5 list still interest us because they don’t rely on simply the persona of the musicians for their punch or charm. The films that don’t hold up--such as Prince’s hopelessly self-conscious “Purple Rain”--are the ones that don’t back the star power of the musicians with any convincing or involving cinematic elements.

“High Fidelity” not only joins the list of great rock films, but also extends their boundaries by showing you don’t have to limit yourself to the musicians’ stories to explain the fascination of the rock experience.