Sid y Nancy

Finally upgraded from VHS to the special edition DVD of this Alex Cox film about the ill fated Sid Vicious & his honey Nancy Spungen.

Watched it twice in fact , just had to hear the commentary from Cox because he is a director who I admire for trying to tap into the conscious of the subject he tackles.

As an old punk myself it would be easy for me to be biased and lean with a nostalgic slant with the film, but truth is this film doesn't glamorise the duo because they are portrayed as the pathetic self destructive couple they were. The film perfectly captures the time frame of what is indisputably the music and cultural phenomenon known as Punk Rock, the only blight on this great piece of work is the ending, which as Cox agrees is far too romanticised after the harshness the viewer has just sat thru. Yet this film ranks as one of the most honest and frank music biography movies out on the market, and I urge anyone who stays away from it because of an aversion to Punk and it's offshoots to seek it out ASAP.

The acting from Gary Oldman & Chloe Webb is nothing short of amazing, the photography from Roger Deakins is very impressive......

...witness a scene as Vicious leaves a New Jersey prison and walks across a deserted scrap heap with New York prominent in the background, the twin towers cloaked in cloud . The direction is smart, funny, and handled perfectly {till that ending }, and the music arrangement is done adroitly by all involved, but I have to say that viewing it now and hearing Joe Strummer sing Love Kills at the closing credits gives me an added emotional kicker {SO YES A LITTLE BIAS HERE FROM ME }.

8/10

This vivid recreation of the last, not quite desperate days of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and his junkie/lover Nancy Spungen celebrates all the pathetic excesses of punk rock anarchy, but without the overwrought clichés Oliver Stone would later use to embalm kindred rock martyr Jim Morrison. It would be hard to find a more honest and unsettling portrait of show biz degradation, and yet the two lovers shared an almost tender (if self-destructive) affection for each other, conveyed by director Alex Cox with a gritty, forthright lyricism (their silhouetted embrace amidst a hail of garbage provides the film's most telling image). If nothing else, the pair were certainly more loyal to the nihilistic punk aesthetic than their contemporaries, and the film chronicles their slow, co-dependent suicide from the gutters of swinging London to the alleys of New York City, with an ill-conceived detour to Nancy's white-bread Middle America homestead. Gary Oldman brilliantly captures the ignorant anger (and sometimes disarming innocence) of the man described by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren as a "fabulous disaster", and Chloe Webb is equally fine as the ugly duckling drug addict Nancy.

This movie is not historically accurate. Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. This is not about the history of the Sex Pistols. Details don't matter, this movie is about feeling. Two misguided, deluded outcasts who are so completely, desperately in love, that they won't leave each other, even though they are probably the worst people in the world for each other. They spiral into heroin addiction, (which is NOT glamorized. Some of the scenes with them bunkered down in the Chelsea Hotel are downright disgusting) and one of them is killed, although no one knows how exactly how. Punks are usually the unsentimental type, so they tend to give this film the two-finger salute. Well, screw them. It is a beautiful film, which speaks more honestly about love and addiction than any Oscar-grabbing shite that I can find in the New Release section. Gary Oldman and and Chole Webb are excellent, inhabiting their characters right down to marrow. The era is evoked wonderfully, and the film is littered with gorgeous, iconic images, the best of which being Sid and Nancy kissing in an alleyway while garbage rains down on them from above like rice at a wedding. Also, most people ignore how FUNNY this movie is, despite it's heartbreaking subject matter. This is an enjoyable movie, not a punishment, or a slog through the mud. After seeing this movie, a friend of mine was so moved, she packed up everything she had and moved to London, where she lived on the streets for a year, trying to form a punk band. I'd recommend this movie to anyone, not just punks or Sex Pistols fans. It's appeal is much more universal than that. To me, this movie exemplifies my idea of true love. It isn't always pretty. It can drag you over glass, lead you to your grave, debase, humiliate, and destroy you. But it's a connection so strong that you can't deny it. And it's so beautiful that you really don't care if it kills you.

Sid and Nancy is a movie about the tortured relationship between Sid Vicious and his whiny girlfriend, Nancy. Please, somebody turn down the volume on this one, simply because her voice is just too irritating on this critic's last nerve! (Did she really talk like that, or was Ms. Webb in serious need of a voice coach? We may never know.) Most of Sid and Nancy revolves around the two titled post-teen's attempt to maintain some semblance of a real relationship in the midst of a lot of drugs and self-induced violence. What stopped me from turning off this sad statement of a generation was the performance of Gary Oldman. His sneering imitation of Sid's contempt for almost everyone around him masked a touching vulnerability when it came to Nancy and – yep, even their pet kitty.

And I've got to give the truly unforgettable award to Sid and Nancy, based on one single cinematic moment in the film--- you know what that moment is, don't you? Yeppers - Sid belting out a searing rendition of Old Blue Eye's favorite, "My Way". Set against a backdrop of stairs (that call to mind every high school assembly), Oldman scratches and claws at this song with such a ferocious intensity I'd give him the gold statue right now.

Because that's what a cinematic moment really is, the sum total of the character, presented to the audience in a kernel of truth. Gary Oldman – an actor whose gold statuette is long overdue — captures the twin torments of a twisted teen that really just wants to be loved and doesn't know how to get past his own angry angst.

Recent social history is very hard to capture through drama and Alex Cox must be grateful to have such a good plot device (a far from standard love story) to carry us through this difficult and much misunderstood period of history.

Punk rock was born to be a cult. Through all the headlines and publicity the central music barely scrapped the US charts: The Sex Pistols one studio album only just crept in to the American top 100 and they were viewed more as a novelty act than the next big thing. Only when the whole thing was tamed and popified did the thing take off, by then renamed "new wave" to differentiate between the new and old school.

(By this time the Pistols had long since self-destructed.)

In the beginning, the Sex Pistols were more a private party than a band, indeed they often played them instead of more normal gigs. The original punks were anti fashion and anti everything, attracting misfits of all kinds and colours; although art and fashion students made up the majority. This really was an open house with prostitutes, homosexuals and exhibtionists being equally welcome.

(This is accurately depicted in the movie.)

Sid and Nancy were from this hanging-on group and although joining the group as bassist and groupie respectively (Nancy tried to get it on with most of the band) they were never more than window dressing. The Pistol sound was Lydon/Rotten's voice and Steve Jones's power chords. Sid never even played on the records.

It is notable that many icons manage to have an icon haircut (Elvis, Rolling Stones, Beatles all set hair fashions) and amazingly SV even managed one himself with his perfect spikes. His look, his life and his early death made him a cult, but he didn't leave a legacy behind other than a series of half-hearted drunken rants.

Hard to see how Oldman could do more to be Vicious other than lose a few years. SV died at 21 and Oldman is clearly older (28 at the time of filming), but that is my only quibble. Chloe Webb (as Nancy) is also good, but annoying, like a dog that won't shut up barking and chewing the furniture, until you just accept it. A life consisting of drugs, sex and TV - often consumed all at the same time.

Alex Cox's direction (possibly because he knew the punk movement first hand rather than through the papers) is first rate - like Quentin Tarantino lite - but he is just as much a flash-in-the-pan as Sid and Nancy himself. He can't make a mainstream movie, because all he is interested in is man's ugly underbelly and without major acting talent these things look self-indulgent and even amateurish.

However this is a moral look at drug taking - not the "fun before it gets serious" moral - the "its never a good idea full stop" one. Sid is a child, Nancy is barely any more than a child, but more street-wise. Too lazy for work she used oral sex like most people use a credit card.

I like this film because it has something to say about undeserved fame, what you do (or the few choices you have) after your fifteen minutes is up and how empty headed people with no agenda get treated in this big bad world. Whether you want to spend time learning all this is up to you, but it is very well done if you do.