Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 02/26/2002
Originally screened as a 60-minute British TV special, coinciding with the launch of the stage
musical Mamma Mia!, but bolstered with an extra half-hour's worth of material,
Winner Takes It All is a spellbinding trawl through the Swedish band's past, as seen -- for the most part -- through the bandmembers' own eyes. A lot of the story, of course, is already familiar -- even among avowed
ABBA-haters, the quartet's blossoming from the almost-famous ranks of the 1960s
Swedish pop scene through their triumph at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and on to virtual domination of the mid- to late-'70s
pop world is one of the all-time great rags-to-riches tales. The story's savage denouement, too, is the stuff of legend -- how the two married couples who comprised the band shattered, then poured out their bile and heartache across a last fling of fabulous singles.
"The Winner Takes All" itself is so close to autobiography that it is almost spiteful, and one recoils from even imagining what it must have been like in the studio on the day
Agnetha Faltskog was first confronted with her newly ex-husband's handiwork. Imagination, of course, is all listeners do have for that scenario. Alone of the four,
Faltskog declined to be interviewed for the show, preferring to continue living her life as a virtual recluse and allowing the film crew no more than a few minutes of camera time as she contemplatively went about her silent business. Her reticence, however, only amplifies the heartsick ghastliness of those last
ABBA years, lending the program an emotional coda that is absolutely at odds with the grinning togetherness of the band's early years. Elsewhere, too, the story is told with an informative air that completely strips away the anodyne aura that generally surrounds
ABBA, while the accompanying live and TV footage, though restricted for the most part to mere clips and snippets, unearths some fabulous performances dating back to the days of
the Hep Stars and
the Hootenanny Singers. Other highlights include an insider's view of the string of promotional films that the band was shooting years before the rest of the world leaped aboard the video bandwagon. Everybody remembers the flamboyant costumes that were
ABBA's trademark through their biggest years, but who recalls the medium through which they first saw them -- and how pioneering that medium was at the time? A handful of criticisms do surface, but they're easily dealt with. Meaningless backstage documentation of the stage show takes up a quite disproportionate amount of time (and also consumes the only significant bonus material), while a handful of celebrity interviews add nothing more than the interviewees' own egos to the proceedings. Who, after all, cares what
Bono,
Malcolm McLaren,
Steps, and self-styled media personality
Paul Gambaccini think of
ABBA? Apart from
Bono,
Malcolm McLaren,
Steps, and
Paul Gambaccini, that is. But, if you arm yourself with a well-oiled fast-forward finger, such intrusions become as irrelevant as the intruders themselves, leaving the remainder of
Winner Takes It All to stand as a pristine, near-perfect documentary of all that was ever ace about
ABBA.
~Dave Thompson, All Music Guide
;)
