Sorry, this movie sucks

Simply Perfect

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Brilliant, innovative telling of the Madchester story.The story of the emergence of Manchester as a major musical centre in the late-1970s and 80s. The story is told through the eyes of Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan), Grenada TV presenter/journalist, owner of The Hacienda, a famed Manchester club, and founder of Factory Records. We see the where it all started - the Sex Pistols first gig in Manchester and the emergence of bands like the Buzzcocks and, most importantly, Joy Division. We see how New Order formed from Joy Division and later we meet the Happy Mondays... Wonderfully entertaining yet edifying. It helps if you're into bands like Joy Division and the Happy Mondays, as I am. Even if you're not, it is worth watching to gain a better knowledge of musical history and the importance of what took place in Manchester in the 80s.This movie could easily have degenerated into a dry, linear history lesson. However, director Michael Winterbottom keeps the audience engaging and entertained through many innovative methods: breaking the fourth wall, humour, Wilson's narration and some interesting visual effects.As you would expect, there is a lot of music in the movie, and it is all great. Well chosen and timed too, as the music gives the movie its momentum.Solid performance by Steve Coogan in the lead role. While mostly a dramatic role, there are quite a few comedic moments, and Coogan is in his element there. Good supporting cast too.

-contains spoilers-Tony Wilson is full of himself with his twisted recollection of the 80s and 90s and how this rave culture and genre of music came about.In this movie he claims that it came about through his collaborations with this new order of music he discovered called Punk Rock in the very late 70s. Also makes it appear that he alone helped to launch this genre of music to the public. That is totally untrue and either he is delusional or just lying to sell the story. Punk and this hard rock type of sound originated in the very early 70s with followers of bands like MC5, The Stooges, and others. The stuff that played at The Factory may have included punk-styled singers but most of the bands were just pop-rock garage bands.Later into the 80s and early 90s the bands Tony Wilson was incorporated with were just the same type of pop dance music you heard everywhere, but some with a slightly rougher sound some of the time. He says in the film that they were based on some new sound one of his producers had created but since the late 70s there were hundreds of bands similar to Happy Mondays, New Order, etc. Even American radio had been playing lighter versions of these bands like The Cure for almost a decade before.He claims that his club in the early 90s and these bands playing there accidentally stumbled onto this new form of music called "rave". That and his claim that they were the first club playing this "new" music and having live DJs is another total untruth. There were rave parties in Orlando and Miami every weekend, that I remember, from 88-98. This rave music and it's dance parties had been all over the world before his club even opened. And it was not based on pop-rock-dance bands but digital music intentionally designed for those taking hallucinogenics and other drugs, not just dancing. It is more likely that no one wanted to see the bands he was sponsoring so the club had to change and jump on the new dance party trend that was already sweeping the world.Though this is an entertaining movie and I would recommend it if you come across it on television. The fact that it is a type of documentary based on lies makes it's score plummet. Tony Wilson could have very easily just told things in a historically accurate way and the movie would mean much more.

So, the history is there, in a sort of hazy blotch of spurtches (those are real words, look them up), but of course it's told to us by one person, Tony Wilson, who everyone in the film repeatedly says is a c*nt, and potentially the worst kind, a charming c*nt that appears to know everything, is married multiple times to women he constantly cheats on, and appears to fail at everything except failure (he's apparently married to a former Miss UK as of the film's making). His specialty is talking out of his ass and spotting the next big thing in music. So, we're treated to the Sex Pistols, we're treated to Joy Division and New Order, the Happy Mondays, bands the kids don't know they know unless they know they need to. It's told tongue-and-cheek, and you know it must embrace the spirit of it because there are multiple cameos by the people who were a part of it. It also comes with a light of mockumentary about it, as though it needs to make fun of itself to keep you off about whether this or that happened that way or if it happened at all (and sometimes they will straight up tell you it didn't). A little too self-aware to be a masterpiece, but it's revetting and loads of fun to watch, all the same.

There's more to this than meets the eye. You may like it simply for the music. Superficially, it is a one of those things unsuitably called a "docudrama," a category that I don't quite understand.But here's the way it is constructed. We have a fellow whose job is to show viewers around odd and interesting things. He's a character who takes on a metarole in the film as our guide, sometimes within the movie and sometimes stepping out of it and speaking directly to us, using several modes.And the subject of this carefully folded structure? Anarchism. Music as anarchy, as specifically breaking the musical equivalent of narrative. I'm not sure that anyone can honestly like this music without making the commitment themselves. Otherwise, its a sort of perverse voyeurism, but I guess that's what drives the music business.Winterbottom isn't a halfway kinda guy though, and you should be inclined to share anything he serves up. Here, he is back in the German new wave mode, where there is no story at all. No arc, no climax. Each event just sort of falls into the next. The camera (which takes the role of the watcher within, Tony, and the watcher without) similarly falls. To underscore this, Winterbottom has Ian Curtis hang himself in front of a TeeVee. On that is playing Herzog's Stroszek, dancing chicken and the amuck truck. Its Herzog's film with the same attitude: no narrative, a loss of narrative is the narrative or where the hole is.After that death, incidentally, is one of the most haunting images I've seen. I do not think it is taken from another film. Children in Klan suits, some black, parade in a highly stylized 2d shot, then one carries a huge, erect Klan hat on a false color beach and tumbles.You might consider this the male lover of "9 Songs." I do.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.