If you like music, any kind of music, then the most exciting, original and entertaining movie to see this summer is a documentary. In 1975, the Sex Pistols kicked in the door of British culture, smashing chairs, ripping the stuffing from couches, breaking mirrors, pissing on carpets. Then burned the whole house down–themselves with it.
In breaking up after only 26 months and one studio album, the legendary band created and catalyzed the entire punk movement. In the process, they left a legacy of some of the most tumultuous, revolutionary years and sounds in music history.
Miraculously, much of the event was captured on film and reassembled by director Julien Temple into the action-and-fact-packed documentary The Filth and the Fury. Loaded with style, energy and the often overlooked wit of the explosive band, the movie is entertaining for both fans and newcomers to rock’s original parental nightmare.
Temple masterfully transports the audience back to one of the most energized and pivotal times in popular culture. With a background in music videos, as well as feature films, his understanding of the interaction of sound and image translates into fantastic editing and concert footage montages. Such cinematography carries the viewer into the vitality of the music.
But what makes this film so engaging is that it isn’t just a music video, but a compelling storyline imaginatively presented. Covering national politics, band infighting, banned concerts, a suspected murder and a drug overdose, the movie draws on a wealth of activity. With so much going on at once, the audience could easily be lost, but Temple’s storytelling skill unifies it all in a narrative line provided by present day interviews.
These interviews punctuate a visual cocktail that includes rare interviews, colourful news coverage and ironic archival footage of ’70s ads all set to a plush soundtrack featuring the Pistols, The Bay City Rollers, The Village People and more. Throwing in a box of Crunch ‘n Munch, a foot rub and calling the movie a feast for the senses would not be exaggeration. The Filth and the Fury is exciting to watch and listen to.
Past media accounts portrayed The Sex Pistols as caricatures of drug abuse, decadence and violence, but the record is set straight here as the band’s depth, complexity, integrity and contradictions are captured. Playing children’s benefit concerts and flaunting a political awareness most lack in contemporary McCanada are some of the band’s positives. But sporting swastikas as a very easily misunderstood statement about classist hypocrisy is of dubious artistic and social value.
The common sense of irony shared by the filmmaker and his subjects gives the film a levity many wouldn’t expect from a band branded the "antithesis of humanity" and "a threat more dangerous than communism" by the press and conservative British citizens. But ironic and humourous they were, seeing the absurd in the stuffy English character and poking fun at it every chance they got. Juxtaposing newsreels of the labour riots then sweeping England with the Bay City Rollers singing "Shang-a-Lang" says more about the Sex Pistols than hours worth of interviews ever could. And it’s more fun too.