The Filth And The Fury
Rock 'n Roll is a musical canvas artists have used to express themselves for over half a century now. Since its inception it's always been considered a threat to the establishment and many musicians have come along and made good on that threat while others are just fronts for big-business record companies. In this age of glamor boy bands, sultry teenage girl singers and bubblegum pop that rivals the 1950s for sheer cheese value there's never been a more appropriate time for "The Filth And The Fury." This is a documentary about The Sex Pistols, one of the most controversial and shocking bands due to the fact they were absolutely 100 percent authentic in their rage against the machine.
Most bands you hear today are just watered-down versions of a better artist that isn't in the limelight anymore. I've read about The Sex Pistols and heard of their outrageous behavior but I've never truly understood or appreciated how influential they've been on rock music for the past quarter century. If their story were told as fiction today it would probably be the most trite thing you could imagine.
"The Filth And The Fury" lives up to its name right from the get-go. There's a considerable amount of time spent in depicting England in the mid-1970s which apparently was on the verge of a revolution, a civil war or just pure anarchy. We're shown real footage of news broadcasts of the time - of garbage piling up all over London due to a labor strike, of people rioting as if it were their full-time job and of the punk scene where the youth did everything and anything outrageous and rebellious to lash out against the system. Then along came The Sex Pistols, a rock band born and raised in these deplorable conditions that utterly symbolized the people's outrage. They weren't trying to be evil and shocking for kicks, this is really how they lived their life.
The band consisted of four members; lead singer Johnny Rotten; bassist Glen Matlock; drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones. Matlock later quit the band and was replaced by Sid Vicious. They dressed in ripped t-shirts, ripped leather held together by safetypins with dyed hair and sometimes adorned themselves with Swastikas. Their fans had even more outrageous hair designs and clothing, often looking like monster out of an Ed Wood movie. The music was probably the "hardest" rock of the day although by today's standards it's almost run-of-the-mill. What put it overboard was Rotten's lyrics and vocals - an all-out assault of outlandish behavior and anti-establishment messages that added up to a big middle finger to world (of course that gesture was employed a lot too). Their first gigs took place in the back of strip clubs and S&M shops, attracting the kind of people we'd think of as the most twisted and perverse. But it's not like they were out to make radio-friendly unit shifters and sell records. The band was each of the members' reason for living, otherwise they could just wallow their lives away like so many other people of the time.
What's most interesting about this film is that it's the story of The Sex Pistols in pretty much their own words. There's present-day interviews with the band members individually (they still hold grudges against each other and their former managment). Each has his own chance to tell his perspective of a story or of an event - there's no neutral narrator. There's no interviews with musicians of today discussing the influence they had. About 95% of what appears on screen is original footage shot before, during and after their rise to fame. It's almost unbelievable how much was captured on film, so much so that you wonder if a lot of it is re-enactments because there's so much footage of such significance.
Director Julien Temple and company keep the motif of the dark and dreary 70s rich and consistent. This is the REALLY ugly side of the 70s you never read about in history books or see in mainstream rock documentaries. The mood is so wholly "underground" that when stuff like the occasional S&M scene is throw in, or when psychedelic animation shows the band in a dream-like state, or we see real documentary footage of The Sex Pistols live shows and how insance their fans were it never seems out of the ordinary. This whole movie is practically one step away from being hardcore pornography or even an snuff film, the only difference is those vices come in the form of the Pistols' existence - of being the most dangerous thing to the English empowerment at the time.
I do have a few bones to pick, though. Firstly, the editing style is a bit strange, with constant cuts from footage of the Pistols performing live to backstage footage to newsreels to bizarre S&M and punk footage that has little to do with the band themselves. If Oliver Stone had this made this movie then I could understand it. Also, the modern-day interviews with the band are shot in shadows - why? Are they ashamed of themselves? It's probably meant to keep with the overall darkness of the film, but it seemed out of place to me. I didn't even enjoy the music that much, I find their sound bland and repetitive and Rotten's singing is grating and unmelodic. That's why these guys aren't recoginized so much as musicians as they are performers and revolutionaries (they only have one studio album).
For the most part this is a pretty enjoyable film, certainly an educational one at the very least. "The Filth And The Fury" is a must-see to anyone whose ever thought ANY form of mainstream entertainment could be a public enemy. The Sex Pistols might not have changed the world for the better, or in any way at all, but the fact they shocked the establishment as much as they did and were persecuted for simply being themselves is scary.
GRADE: B
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