Sid and Nancy (18.)
Directed by Alex Cox. 1986.
Starring Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Andrew Schofield, Xander Berkley and David Hayman. 112 mins. 30th Anniversary re-release.
All actors playing a famous musician have to try and deal with a seemingly insurmountable problem: no matter how hard they try to mimic their subject's abilities, they're not going to be as good. In this biopic of Sid Vicious, Gary Oldman has the opposite problem – he always seems to be a little bit too together in his musical performances. He knows all the lyrics for example, (particularly ridiculous when he's performing the wordy Somethin' Else) and his singing of My Way is a little too tuneful.
Other than that though, his big screen debut is remarkable capturing Sid's idiotic enthusiasm, his (sometimes intentional) humour and the childlike innocence with which he pursued the task of trying to live up to his name. He does though cheat a little: Vicious was like a monkey on a rocket ship, gamely navigating a course that had been set for him, but Oldman gives him enough berk charisma to make his presence bearable. Regrettably, Oldman is well matched by Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen, the American junkie and groupie who would hook up with Vicious and die of a knife wound by his side in the Chelsea Hotel in 1978. She gives us the full on, finger-scraping-down-blackboard Nancy, just whining and shouting constantly. She's almost unbearable to watch; which is a testament to the truth of her performance, but you wonder if she couldn’t have let up on us just a little in places
Future Moviedrome presenter Cox, who after the freewheeling invention of his debut Repo Man was very much a director to watch, was already someone trying to get a punk spirit into the movies. The British set first half of the film is a cartoonish vision of punk: the Pistols stumbling around a grey, bleak London, causing chaos wherever they go like a nihilistic version of Hard Day's Night. The first half is terrible really – a pale imitation of the Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. It's all a bit too chummy with various trendy faces from the time popping up; like Absolute Beginners, only with graffiti and drab boozers. A big problem is that Schofield (who had been very endearing on telly as the title character in Alan Bleasdale's Scully) isn't convincing as Johnny Rotten. Rotten nee Lydon is a far more challenging roll than Vicious because he really is a one off and Schofield can only summon up a basic approximation of his trademark sneer; there's none of his wary intelligence. It's like Paul Merton's deadpan re-enactments of Hancock's Half Hour, hoping that a single trait will be enough to embody the whole creation.
America destroyed the Pistols but the film is saved halfway through when it goes to America. I don't really buy into the film's view that Sid and Nancy were this great doomed romance, but it's a story it knows how to tell. Separated from the band and thrown together with Nancy, the second half charts their decline. It is grim, but leavened with moments of humour and lovely poetic, surreal flourishes, such as the rubbish falling around them in slow motion as they kiss in a derelict New York alley.
The film's held up well over the thirty years. In the extras Don Letts offers up the theory that youth culture, or at least that urge to make little youth culture movements, has been destroyed by the internet. Today Punk nostalgia is institutionalised and though Sid and Nancy plays into that, it also reminds us the Sex Pistols and punk in general were genuinely vile. Some great songs but the spitting and violence was unbelievable. And the next time you feel like complaining about gentrification, watch this to be reminded just how fantastically grim London and Manhattan were three decades ago. The film also shows us that punk wasn't quite as revolutionary as is it is remembered: despite its protagonists proclaiming that everything that proceeded them was “boring,” most of punks were desperate to ape the tired rock'n'roll cliches of the old 60s rockers.
Extras.
Three Interviews, all worthwhile.
Roger Deakins, the cinematographer and the man behind the re-issue, talks happily about shooting his first feature films and how hectic it all was.
Don Letts, the shameless Don Letts, reminiscing and name dropping about the punk scene but often with insight. Unlike the great generation that won the war, the great generation that created Punk do like to talk about it, indeed they won't shut up about it. But then as there are still people willing to listen to them why should they?
Best of all is director Cox who explains the impetus for making the movie (primarily to sabotage a proposed Rupert Everett/ Madonna version) and offers a very honest and perceptive analysis of the film's failings, as well as revealing John Lydon's ideas for how the film should be shot.
Directed by Alex Cox. 1986.
Starring Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Andrew Schofield, Xander Berkley and David Hayman. 112 mins. 30th Anniversary re-release.
All actors playing a famous musician have to try and deal with a seemingly insurmountable problem: no matter how hard they try to mimic their subject's abilities, they're not going to be as good. In this biopic of Sid Vicious, Gary Oldman has the opposite problem – he always seems to be a little bit too together in his musical performances. He knows all the lyrics for example, (particularly ridiculous when he's performing the wordy Somethin' Else) and his singing of My Way is a little too tuneful.
Other than that though, his big screen debut is remarkable capturing Sid's idiotic enthusiasm, his (sometimes intentional) humour and the childlike innocence with which he pursued the task of trying to live up to his name. He does though cheat a little: Vicious was like a monkey on a rocket ship, gamely navigating a course that had been set for him, but Oldman gives him enough berk charisma to make his presence bearable. Regrettably, Oldman is well matched by Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen, the American junkie and groupie who would hook up with Vicious and die of a knife wound by his side in the Chelsea Hotel in 1978. She gives us the full on, finger-scraping-down-blackboard Nancy, just whining and shouting constantly. She's almost unbearable to watch; which is a testament to the truth of her performance, but you wonder if she couldn’t have let up on us just a little in places
Future Moviedrome presenter Cox, who after the freewheeling invention of his debut Repo Man was very much a director to watch, was already someone trying to get a punk spirit into the movies. The British set first half of the film is a cartoonish vision of punk: the Pistols stumbling around a grey, bleak London, causing chaos wherever they go like a nihilistic version of Hard Day's Night. The first half is terrible really – a pale imitation of the Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. It's all a bit too chummy with various trendy faces from the time popping up; like Absolute Beginners, only with graffiti and drab boozers. A big problem is that Schofield (who had been very endearing on telly as the title character in Alan Bleasdale's Scully) isn't convincing as Johnny Rotten. Rotten nee Lydon is a far more challenging roll than Vicious because he really is a one off and Schofield can only summon up a basic approximation of his trademark sneer; there's none of his wary intelligence. It's like Paul Merton's deadpan re-enactments of Hancock's Half Hour, hoping that a single trait will be enough to embody the whole creation.
America destroyed the Pistols but the film is saved halfway through when it goes to America. I don't really buy into the film's view that Sid and Nancy were this great doomed romance, but it's a story it knows how to tell. Separated from the band and thrown together with Nancy, the second half charts their decline. It is grim, but leavened with moments of humour and lovely poetic, surreal flourishes, such as the rubbish falling around them in slow motion as they kiss in a derelict New York alley.
The film's held up well over the thirty years. In the extras Don Letts offers up the theory that youth culture, or at least that urge to make little youth culture movements, has been destroyed by the internet. Today Punk nostalgia is institutionalised and though Sid and Nancy plays into that, it also reminds us the Sex Pistols and punk in general were genuinely vile. Some great songs but the spitting and violence was unbelievable. And the next time you feel like complaining about gentrification, watch this to be reminded just how fantastically grim London and Manhattan were three decades ago. The film also shows us that punk wasn't quite as revolutionary as is it is remembered: despite its protagonists proclaiming that everything that proceeded them was “boring,” most of punks were desperate to ape the tired rock'n'roll cliches of the old 60s rockers.
Extras.
Three Interviews, all worthwhile.
Roger Deakins, the cinematographer and the man behind the re-issue, talks happily about shooting his first feature films and how hectic it all was.
Don Letts, the shameless Don Letts, reminiscing and name dropping about the punk scene but often with insight. Unlike the great generation that won the war, the great generation that created Punk do like to talk about it, indeed they won't shut up about it. But then as there are still people willing to listen to them why should they?
Best of all is director Cox who explains the impetus for making the movie (primarily to sabotage a proposed Rupert Everett/ Madonna version) and offers a very honest and perceptive analysis of the film's failings, as well as revealing John Lydon's ideas for how the film should be shot.
