I'm going to preface this with a confession: I typically can't stand music bio films. When they're not just a vehicle to showcase the lead's performance then they're light jaunts through said musicians' greatest hits, with a couple of tragedies thrown in. The hagiography aspect is also grating, with people like Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly treated as pure, sin-free vessels that the Gods saw fit to deliver their music. That's why in films like La Bamba a side character like Bob can come in and steal the entire movie from the lead. Bob is flawed, obnoxious, and has a great character arc. Ritchie's just a good kid who faces standard odds, gets famous, and dies. No one quotes Ritchie's dialog from that movie, and I'd say that a larger number of viewers were more touched by Bob's reaction to Ritchie's death than the death itself.
Sid and Nancy is a movie that I lived and breathed for several years. As a young would-be punk I watched this film regularly and would incessantly quote it with friends. Well, maybe just the first half. It was acknowledged among us that the first hour of this film is a hilarious, fun-filled romp, and the ending is slow and depressing. We would typically finish the film, but the sensation at the mid point was always that the good times were behind us.
This was not an accident. While Sid and Nancy kicks off with booze and drug fueled punk rock fun, director Alex Cox then slows things down to show the downward spiral this lifestyle led to for Sid and Nancy. It's not a cautionary tale, and can been seen as a fairy tale romance between two junkies, but one can't shake the overall feeling that doing hard drugs will lead to misery and death. Like Requiem For a Dream and Kids, just because a movie doesn't set out to be a PSA doesn't mean that it won't become one by its very nature.
Thankfully, while Sid's a lovable loser, there's no attempt here to show him as someone that society "wronged" in any way. He's not an innocent lamb, and both him and Nancy knew what they were doing and came to their ends inevitably due to choices that they willingly and happily made. They liked doing drugs and abusing themselves, and though they hint at times at a desire for something better (Sid's insincere statements about wanting to kick drugs, Nancy's complaints about how her life has been largely unimportant), it never feels like either one of them really means this. They have no intentions of giving up their lifestyle, and music was only there for Sid to get money to pay for drugs, pizza, and rent. If anything, while Johnny Rotten's undeniably a prick in this movie, you find yourself sympathizing with his frustrations at seeing his friend go from an enthusiastic drunk to a stumbling, non-functioning junkie. Aside from teenagers, no one watching this movie is going to end it by wanting to hang out with these people.
Sid and Nancy is a biopic, yes, but it's also one of the best because, like Amadeus, it's informed by Cox's artistic sensibilities (such as the shot of Sid and Nancy leaning against a dumpster and making out while garbage rains down on them). There are layers to this film that make it something more than a greatest hits of The Sex Pistols and Sid's solo work. You get those scenes, but they feed into the larger story about frustrated, low-class bored youth turning towards drugs, music and self-destruction as a way to act out their justifiable frustrations at their place in society.
My love for this movie is once again going to bump it higher than most people would rank it. Incidentally, it's a battle between two frustrated youth movies, and my personal leanings are putting it just above The 400 Blows. I love that movie, but it was never a seminal feature of my life like Sid and Nancy was. My own youth, boredom and frustrations were directly spoken to by this film, and it got into my bones the way something like The 400 Blows never did. Thankfully, seeing it a decade after my last viewing, it still holds up.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Seven Samurai (1954)
3. The Seventh Seal (1957)
4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
5. Grand Illusion (1937)
6. Shock Corridor (1963)
7. Hard Boiled (1992)
8. Sid and Nancy (1986)
9. The 400 Blows (1959)
10. Walkabout (1971)
11. The Killer (1989)
12. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
13. The Naked Kiss (1964)
14. A Night to Remember (1958)
15. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
16. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
17. Amarcord (1973)
18. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Next time: I strap myself up and spread 'em for David Cronenberg's classic Dead Ringers.
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