Dir. Michael Winterbottom
There’s no way to review this one fully objectively. For one, when I saw it on screen I’d actually already seen it before, albeit in a very dodgy bootleg, so this was a second impression. Next, I’m a club kid at heart, and I really do love the history of club culture, of which the Hacienda is a big part. And so, when I was writing about Britain for Let’s Go, I actually requested to cover Manchester so that I could go to the site of the Hacienda (which had shut down the year before) to pay homage. I suppose it means something that a few of my friends from America e-mailed me just to say “I saw 24 Hour Party People and it reminded me of you”. And lastly, after two films in a row about different forms of evil, I really needed a break, and this was just perfect.
So of course I loved it. I’ll admit my top two films of this festival remain The Man Without a Past and City of God, but this was entertainingly irreverent, as any film featuring Bez and Shaun Ryder ought to be. Steve Coogan is great as the shameless self-promoter Tony Wilson, proving that just because you blow your own trumpet doesn’t mean you don’t have talent. Coogan acts the “clever and in love with himself” part enough to make the self-referential parts where he speaks to camera feel appropriate, where in other hands they could very well look like trying too hard to be clever. Rock and dance movies are a tough genre, so it’s always good when they fall into place, and the shout-out to the moment where they honour the DJ is major bonus points in my book. I wish they had a bigger part for the other members of New Order, and it doesn’t fully explain the importance of the Happy Mondays to people who don’t know their place in the British music scene. But these are quibbles, trifles. The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I’ll honour its tone.
As the movie makes abundantly clear, the Hacienda (catalogue number: Fac 51), and indeed the whole of Factory Records, was run on dreams and no business sense. So you know the end is inevitable, but the moments up till the end are glorious - which is much like a great club night, and which is why the legacy of Factory remains forever. Image is everything: the Sex Pistols, whose Manchester concert is one of the first things we see, were, after all, clothes and an attitude before they were ever a band. “Print the legend”, says Tony at one point, but at this point, the legend is the truth.
Notes: Why in the world did they use a print with French subtitles in Singapore?… A pity the pre-show music was Gipsy Kings, they could’ve played something from Factory Records’ great past… I love that they quote The Consolation of Philosophy, which I admit I’ve left languishing on my shelf after reading it once… Pigeons ARE rats with wings… A Roger Ebert review of this film reveals that Ebert was the unlikely screenwriter of a Sex Pistols screenplay.