The Filth and the Fury

Forget everything you may have heard or read about the Sex Pistols. Forget "Sid and Nancy". This is THE documentary. A warts and all look inside the lives of a band that changed the face of music forever. Never mind Julien Temple's earlier effort "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle", the sensationalist Malcom McLaren (Manager of the Pistols) centred documentary. "Filth" tells the story using the the band (and a lot of Temple's own 1970's 'never before seen' home video tapes).

In existence for only 26 months and releasing only one album, the Sex Pistols evolved within a time of massive economic, social and cultural oppression in England. This was an era unlike any other. Staggering youth unemployment; squalid streets where the piles of rubbish became small hills and the stench over-powering, and with the IRA bombing campaign reaching its peak. One of the most amazing things about this documentary is that it actually takes us back in time to the mid-70's landscape of London. Through the use of newsreel footage, television adverts of the day, weather reports and game-show clips, "Filth" immerses the viewer in everything absurdly "English" from the time.

The documentary not only lets you "feel" like you're actually there with the band, it tells you so much that you actually believe you were there. Without going into essay length about the story of the Sex Pistols, there are just so many interesting/bizarre facts revealed about the band that you really begin to realise why they are such a huge influence on music today. I may be ignorant, but I now know that Johnny Rotten started spitting on stage only because of his sinus problems, Sid Vicious inadvertently started the "pogo" dance, and the band were the first ever to say the "F" word on British television. David Bowie, Siouxie Sioux and Elvis Costello could often be spotted at a Pistols show, and opening bands on the bill ranged from The Clash, The Damned and The Buzzcocks.

One-to-one interviews with each surviving band member, as well as extensive interview footage with Sid Vicious (Hyde Park-1978), are revealing and extremely honest. The many sides and angles of the Pistols story have been told by those that lived it. Almost all of the interviews have been shot in silhouette, so the only faces you see are those of the members being "The Sex Pistols". The idea being not to spoil the feel or continuity of the film, and from saving us all having to look at a bunch of old blokes talking about "those crazy days".

Julien Temple proves himself to be the only man for the job of Director. There is a lot to be said about someone who abandons there student film career and goes about documenting a band, but Julien Temple did just that. His ability to display the true personalities of each band member is remarkable, and this has translated over to the audience. In a recent interview he states "People have watched the film and been almost in tears at the end, which is the last thing you would expect from a Sex Pistols movie. But it is because there was never anything about the Pistols that you expected, that was part of their power".

No, I didnt cry, but the story of the Pistols is a tragic one ending with the split of the group, Sid Vicious being the prime suspect over the death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, and then his drug induced death months later.

Whether you're a fan of the Sex Pistols or not is really irrelevant. Whether you play in a punk band is also irrelevant (although it'll make you think twice about the term "punk"). The point is, if your interested in music, popular culture or human behaviour, this is a movie that will reward you. Both entertaining and informative, "The Filth and The Fury" actually delivers as being "the definitive story of The Sex Pistols".

'The Filth And The Fury' isn't only the best music-related documentary I've ever seen, but one of the best documentaries ever made on ANY subject. Julian Temple succeeds in blending archival footage of the band, various ads, rock videos, news reports, TV comedians, Olivier's 'Richard III', and recent interviews, and by this manages to put the Sex Pistols in a musical, political and CULTURAL context. If that sounds pretentious, the movie is anything but. It is fabulously entertaining but at the same time is a fascinating, insightful HONEST portrait that should appeal to both die hard fans and novices.

So few movies or TV shows treat music seriously, or show that it can be much more than mass-produced trivialized entertainment. 'The Filth And The Fury' does exactly that and is all the more powerful for it. A revelatory piece of film! I hope every rock'n'roll fan turns off MTV and watches this instead. If they did the music world would be a much better place.

If nothing else, this is the only Sex Pistols film (there are now at least 3) to make explicit and in-depth reference to the band members' working class roots, and the way that experience informed their project. This alone makes the film worth seeing, as it explodes the myth, fostered no doubt by their PT Barnum manager, Malcolm McLaren, that the whole project was an exercise in cynical nihilism and money grubbing. As the band members tell it, nothing could have been further from the truth. I believe them.

The film is cobbled together in large part from 2 previous Sex Pistols documentaries, "Rock 'n' Roll Swindle," (a McLaren project also directed, ironically enough, by F&F director Julie Temple) and "D.O.A," plus clips from BBS television and elsewhere that try to locate the Pistols in the political and social climate that spawned them. This effort, to give the Pistols a historical context, is by far the most valuable part of the film for those trying to understand how a bunch of working class stiffs, who could barely play their instruments, and who only released one album, could set off an explosion that reverberates in the music world--if increasingly faintly--even today.

Best part of the film: footage from their last, secret gig at a palace in a working class district (they had been banned from appearing anywhere in England) before embarking on their ill-fated US tour. It consists of two performance on Christmas Day, benefiting the families of striking local firefighters, who had been out of work for many months. The attendees consist of the local lads and lasses, none of whom are "punk" in any apparent sense of the term.

Before the Pistols performed, everyone eats Sex Pistols cake and ice cream; "Never Mind the Bollocks" shirts are stretched over the pubescent bodies of every bobby soxer. Then, after a thank you from the emcee, the Pistols launch into the searing "Bodies," its sarcastic refrain sung from the point of view of an aborted fetus ("I'm not an animal!/I'm an abortion..."). All the boppers dance like it's a sock hop, with the difference that everyone gleefully throws leftover desserts at one another. Steve Jones is shown playing guitar with his face covered in cake icing, beaming. In his reminiscence about the gig, Rotten grows wistful, saying it was easily their best memory as a band, and the last good one before it all fell apart.

I never knew the guys were such sentimentalists.

It's hard to believe that there once was a time when rock music could actually matter, when it was possible to actually escape the commodified rebellion that now sells Budweiser, Nike, and SUVs, when it was possible, however briefly to scare the pants of the political establishment. Young pop music lovers who swallow the meretricious rebellion of rap or grunge--whose self-important lyrics and idiotically monotonous rhythms make their authors rich off the weekly allowances of white middle class kids whose idea of rebellion is big loud subwoofers in the Corolla Daddy bought them for their 16th birthday--might profit from getting a glimpse of the Real Thing.

The rest of us, who were lucky enough to have been there when history was made, and who can still recall the opening chords of "Anarchy in the UK" blasting all traces of "More Than a Feeling" and "Take It Easy" out of our speakers cabinets and into the first circle of music Hell where they always belonged, can enjoy the film for what it teaches us about the power of ordinary, thoroughly obnoxious people to make their own history, and ours.

Another thing I learned from the film: if Tom Cruise were a junkie, he would look just like Sid Vicious.

This film is a documentary about one of the most influential (certainly one of the most controversial) bands in music history: The Sex Pistols.

During their brief career, the Sex Pistols defined the genre of music called Punk Rock. The film details the situation in Britain at the end of the 1970s, where widespread dissatisfaction and alienation, combined with a very dull music scene, helped fuel the anger and craziness of Punk, which, according to John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), gave a voice to people who previously didn't have a voice.

The film is a collection of present day interviews with the surviving members of the band (given in silhouette, for some reason), archive footage from concerts and TV appearances, vintage movie clips (notably Laurence Olivier as Richard the Third) and surreal animation.

The film mostly sidelines the Pistols' notoriously self-aggrandising manager Malcolm McLaran to concentrate on the band members themselves. The movie gives a good insight into an often quite disturbing world and a scene that was truly anarchic and exciting, whether you were a fan or not. There are also moments of genuine sadness, for example when Lydon talks about his friend, the late Sid Vicious.

This is recommended to anyone interested in popular music, or anyone who wants to see what real Punk was all about.

This movie almost seemed to zip by too fast, but then, so did the Sex Pistols. Come to think of it, the last 20 years (when I first started listening to them in junior high) also zipped by pretty fast...they put all the best songs, the best performances in there, along with some rare footage. Sex Pistols fans may have already seen the interview with a nodded-out Sid Vicious and sleazy girlfriend Nancy Spungen (who makes Courtney Love at her worst look like Grace Kelly) trying to wake him up for the camera as he snores. But what no fans may not have seen is a short, heartbreaking clip of an interview with Vicious after he is out on bail after being arrested for her murder. When the interviewer thoughtlessly asks him if he's 'having fun right now', Vicious just chuckles bitterly and asks him, "Are you kidding? No, I'm not having any fun, at all." when the interviewer asks him where he wishes he was right now, Vicious' quiet, calm answer to the question is so chilling and heartfelt that it made every hair on my body stand on end. In a scene shortly after, John Lydon talks about Sid getting his wish, and for a minute you think in the voice over he is laughing, because as a rule you don't see him displaying any other emotion other than general crankiness, then you suddenly realize he's actually in tears over his dead boyhood friend. But you can also see the fun the Sex Pistols had while it lasted-especially memorable during a reminisence of how they played a children's party, with footage of them covered in cake later, to one of the Pistol's best songs, "Bodies". The soundtrack, timing, and editing are all perfect. As I said, my one complaint that was it zipped by too fast, but talking with my husband after the movie, so did the Sex Pistols. One of the better rock documentaries I've seen.