[Film] 2. 24 Hour Party People

[awahlbom]

1. Tintin i piraternas våld



2. 24 Hour Party People (2002)
A semi-documentary about the music scene in Manchester, from Sex Pistols' 1976 gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall to the closing of the Haçienda in 1997, centered around Factory Records and with Steve Coogan playing the legendary Tony Wilson. How much is true is open for debate, but the movie doesn't even try to pretend it's objectively true; some characters (e.g. both Coogan's Tony Wilson and the real Tony Wilson in his cameo as a Granada TV producer) break the fourth wall to comment on the proceedings. (Case in point: in a scene where Tony's wife Lindsay is having revenge sex with Howard Devoto (played by Martin Hancock) in a club toilet, the real Howard Devoto has a cameo as a cleaner, and looks into the camera saying "I don't remember this happening".)

Though it is slightly (or not so slightly) fictionalised, the parts I already knew are reasonably close to what officially happened. The scenes with Joy Division really got to me: it's not that Sean Harris looks exactly like Ian Curtis, but he moves like Ian on stage. (The scene at Ian's funeral, with "Atmosphere" playing in the background and then seguing into Anton Corbijn's promo video for the song, had me in tears in two seconds. Under my harsh and brutal exterior I'm really an old softie, especially when it comes to JD.) Even given his own involvment in the film, Wilson doesn't come across as a hero, but more as an idealist who is really not fit to operate a business — not a crook, as some claim he really is, but slightly incompetent when it comes to money. (In one scene he reveals that he paid £30,000 for the conference table at Factory's new office, whereupon Rob Gretton jumps him and tries to strangle him.)

Other than that, Andy Serkis plays the legendary eccentric producer Martin Hannett (making him an even creepier character than Gollum), Danny Cunningham plays Shaun Ryder of The Happy Mondays ("You know, I think Shaun Ryder is on a par with W.B. Yeats as a poet." "Well, that is amazing, because everybody else thinks he's a fucking idiot."), and Christopher Eccleston (whose work as the ninth Doctor was still a few years into the future) plays a bum who claims to be Boethius.