A Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets (15.)
Directed by Florian Habicht.
Featuring Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber. 90 mins
Jarvis Cocker is kind of the Bill Nighy of the British pop music: after plugging away in obscurity for ages they seemed to transform effortlessly and almost instantaneously into figures of unquestioned and unchallenged eminence, people you never hear word spoken against. Even the fact that Jarvis has become the default role model for every Hoxton twat was never held against him. It is acknowledged that he did something substantial in the past, something that left him untouchable, something that he doesn’t do any more but was great enough to allow him to drift casually along in that fabled realm of Djing and cultural commenting – early retirement but with work.
What he did was persevere for over decade in Sheffield fronting a band called Pulp before going down to that London and getting pulled up in the whole Oasis/ Blur/ Britpop swirl into pop stardom. After all that effort it was agreed that pop stardom didn’t really agree with them and the band drifted apart. The focus of the film is a 2012 farewell/reunion tour that culminated in a hometown gig in Sheffield.
This is a reluctant concert movie, so although you do get a small selection of performances from the gig at the Sheffield Arena, the film is really a portrait of the City, shot through a Pulp cultural filter. Occasionally band members (mostly JC) will speak to camera but predominantly it is the ordinary, common, people of Sheffield talking about the band and performing their songs. (The best of these is a performance of Help The Aged by residents of an old people’s home.)
Those songs, as good today as they ever were, are the film’s main pleasure. Though they are grounded in kitchen sink social realism (and Cocker’s seedy licentiousness) most of them are improbably hopeful and optimistic: like Saturday Night, Sunday Morning with Tommy Steele replacing Albert Finney. The ability to write songs that are ironic, caustic and yet heartfelt is a rare one. The album Different Class is perhaps over represented and the film opens and closes with the anthem Common People, which may be unfortunate as at times the film seems to be, probably unintentionally, laughing at the ordinary people it uses. Like the people who laugh at the wallpaper in Mike Leigh films, the metropolitan music biz types at the screening seemed to be laughing a little too enthusiastically at the newspaper sellers and ladies in mobility chairs.
Directed by Florian Habicht.
Featuring Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber. 90 mins
Jarvis Cocker is kind of the Bill Nighy of the British pop music: after plugging away in obscurity for ages they seemed to transform effortlessly and almost instantaneously into figures of unquestioned and unchallenged eminence, people you never hear word spoken against. Even the fact that Jarvis has become the default role model for every Hoxton twat was never held against him. It is acknowledged that he did something substantial in the past, something that left him untouchable, something that he doesn’t do any more but was great enough to allow him to drift casually along in that fabled realm of Djing and cultural commenting – early retirement but with work.
What he did was persevere for over decade in Sheffield fronting a band called Pulp before going down to that London and getting pulled up in the whole Oasis/ Blur/ Britpop swirl into pop stardom. After all that effort it was agreed that pop stardom didn’t really agree with them and the band drifted apart. The focus of the film is a 2012 farewell/reunion tour that culminated in a hometown gig in Sheffield.
This is a reluctant concert movie, so although you do get a small selection of performances from the gig at the Sheffield Arena, the film is really a portrait of the City, shot through a Pulp cultural filter. Occasionally band members (mostly JC) will speak to camera but predominantly it is the ordinary, common, people of Sheffield talking about the band and performing their songs. (The best of these is a performance of Help The Aged by residents of an old people’s home.)
Those songs, as good today as they ever were, are the film’s main pleasure. Though they are grounded in kitchen sink social realism (and Cocker’s seedy licentiousness) most of them are improbably hopeful and optimistic: like Saturday Night, Sunday Morning with Tommy Steele replacing Albert Finney. The ability to write songs that are ironic, caustic and yet heartfelt is a rare one. The album Different Class is perhaps over represented and the film opens and closes with the anthem Common People, which may be unfortunate as at times the film seems to be, probably unintentionally, laughing at the ordinary people it uses. Like the people who laugh at the wallpaper in Mike Leigh films, the metropolitan music biz types at the screening seemed to be laughing a little too enthusiastically at the newspaper sellers and ladies in mobility chairs.
