It stopped me in my tracks: a shot of a grinning Johnny Rotten (or as he still was back then, in private, John Lydon) handing a piece of chocolate cake to a child. Before the media (or, at best, in hiding for the media) there was a simple human transaction taking place, one moment of basic honesty and sentimental gesture amidst a genuine social phenomenon and all the bullshit the follows that one moment (or record) of pure, undiluted truth and integrity. Yes folks, its PUNK!!, once something, now something else ("nothing" might be pushing it a bit too far), a terrifying eruption of youth culture now coming to you as a documentary for the Sydney Film Festival. What was that all about, eh?
It may be impossible to reveal anything new on the Pistols, so instead of attempting a grander overview tying together historical records with a notion of how influential the band still is, Temple instead lets the band speak for itself, taking the theorising out of the mouths of historians and allowing individual members to tell the tale. A musical historian might argue that the rise of the Sex Pistols was the ultimate validation of rock music's promise to empower the powerless, a chance for anyone with vision and determination to make something that can change the world in three minutes or less. I think that person would be right. But when guitarist Steve Jones says simply: "At least when I die, they can say I did something", his conviction is even more moving. The continuing relevance of an album like Never Mind The Bollocks doesn't need to be argued; one spin can set you straight. All Temple needs to do is cut together shots of late 70s London in ruin to explain to you why the Pistols and all the bands that followed them were so necessary.
This focus on the personal rather than the historical really pays off when it comes to the relationship between Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. In the midst of a documentary dealing with one band who changed English life forever we see a very simple and stupid story taking place: one man trying to save another from killing himself. As Rotten says near the end of the film: "Yes, I can take on England, but I can't take on one heroin addict". That one line defines the aim of the film; to tell an epic in small, human details, to compare war against a country with war against yourself and all those around you. What stands out particularly is the utter force with which Rotten sang every night until the mockery of Winterland. The early footage is astonishing: with a crowd of only thirty or forty people watching him sings as if this were his final performance, his last chance to exorcise any remnants of hate and misery with one last twisted bellow. Throughout the film Rotten operates as the conscience of the music, the thing that remains while all else grows corrupt and cartoonish. Every night he gets up and stares down the audience with his demented gaze, convincing them of their own power, the possibilities they possess.
Sitting in the theatre, it all makes sense. With time a man inducing his own vomit can seem like a polite gesture to a soon-to-take-power Thatcher. The mezzanine rises in applause: "Well Done Lads! As long as they stay away from me, things will be alright". Then you play the music. The last minute of "Holidays in the Sun", where Rotten lets confusion become his guiding principle. The opening nine guitar down-strokes on "Anarchy", an astonishing moment for a band who claimed they couldn't even play. The gleeful fart-noise Rotten makes at the end of "E.M.I", revolution sealed with the geelful charm of a Dickensian urchin empowered beyond his wildest dreams. That possibility still remains, cutting through Rotten's magnificent Public Image Ltd., cutting through every word of a man who now makes guest appearances on Judge Judy and The Roseanne Show. He should be a joke. But somewhere, somehow, something still convinces, that embarrassing display of anything-goes pranksterism far more punk than any green-haired three chorder you care to name. Underneath rhetoric and MMM nostalgia for a movement dead the moment the sun hits its skin, Rotten is a complicated promise trying to be fulfilled. The Filth and the Fury is his film, and he makes you pay for that.
Adam Rivett
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