Sid & Nancy Reviews

(MU) It's ot about music, but people who went through music so stoned that their fame was ephimeral. When love nurtures drugs. Nancy is so dramatic when cries to Sid "at least you were something, I'm nothing'. Good compositions of the pair in the streets and NY Chelsea Hotel...

Sid and Nancy (1986)
111 min. Embassy Home Entertainment. Director: Alex Cox. Cast: Gary Oldman, David Hayman, Xander Berkeley, Perry Benson, Sy Richardson.

The great cinematic surrealist Luis Buñuel remarked in his autobiography My Last Sigh about a double suicide: "perhaps a truly passionate love, a sublime love that's reached a certain peak of intensity, is simply incompatible with life itself. Perhaps it's too great, too powerful. Perhaps it can exist only in death." Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid and Nancy cemented the iconic view of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his groupie lover Nancy Spungen as the Romeo and Juliet of the punk scene..

Told in a succession of vignettes, Sid and Nancy walks a tightrope between realism and expressionism in its attempt to capture the thrust of punk. Wisely, writer-director Cox and his co-screenwriter Abbe Wool don't concern themselves with doing justice to the full range of personality of Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) or the band's impresario Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman). Though they're larger-than-life, complex characters in their own rights, this is the story of Sid (Gary Oldman) and Nancy (Chloe Webb), and there's not a scene in the film that isn't there directly to reflect some aspect of their relationship, a meeting of like-minded but prickly personalities. The film begins at the end, with Sid arrested on suspicion of murder, then swiftly flashes back to the first encounter of the titular couple. When Johnny proves a cold fish, Nancy shifts her attention to Sid, with the film depicting her as his vessel into a sex life and death-defying heroin addiction (she not-so-fairly warns him, "Never trust a junkie": words to live by).As the Sex Pistols rise in prominence, they increasingly live their lyrics, from "Anarchy in the U.K." to "God Save the Queen" ("We mean it man./There is no future/In England's dreamland...When there's no future/How can there be sin?/We're the flowers/In the dustbin"). As an all-but-accidental rock star, Sid shows little interest in craft and his performances under the influence are barely sustainable. Part of his magnetism and mystique as a performer was his literally staggering unpredictablity, his naked self-destruction in his drug and alcohol use and in his ritualistic cutting (those who followed Vicious would turn these blazing burnouts into conventional shock-value showmanship, stage managed for effect). Sid gave greater attention to his unhinged "home" life with Nancy, largely played out in squalid rooms like those in New York's infamous Chelsea Hotel (where Cox films on location, to great effect). The couple endures a downward spiral through sustained "what day is it?" hazes and brief bursts of domestic abuse on the way to the fatal bender of the film's opening and closing movements.

The necessary roughness of a punk couple on smack isn't the whole story: both Sid and Nancy act out, in part, to mask vulnerabilities. Oldman and Webb throw themselves into their roles. True to life, Webb's Nancy is an aggressively abrasive, downright irritating force of nature, but also sympathetically needy of love and wounded by the rejection of her middle-class family (in fairness, she rejected them first to run away and join the punk circus). Oldman's work is even more impressive. Apart from recreating Vicious performances, including vocals, he soulfully embodies Vicious, especially in startling glimpses of the little boy lost beneath the man's off-putting exterior. Oldman's mid-film music-video performance of “My Way” before a neon staircase compares favorably—as a revelation of character through performance—to Robert De Niro's framing monologues in Raging Bull.

Cox injects his own surreal touches to the larger-than-life plane of existence Sid and Nancy share, dada moments like MacLaren firing an audible shot from a gun gesture or dreamlike moments of grace between the lovers, like the punk poetry of garbage raining down on them as they kiss in a NYC alley. The great cinematographer Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men) traffics just as easily in these moments as the realistically grotty ones (Cox adds verisimilitude by shooting in London, Paris, Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as New York). Music by men who were there—Joe Strummer, The Pogues, and Pray for Rain—adds immeasurably to the mood, as do Cox's usual suspects in quirky supporting roles (Xander Berkeley as a pivotal drug dealer and Miguel Sandoval delivering the immortally bad rock-song pitch "I Wanna Job").

Sid and Nancy is superficially a story of (kinky) sex, (hard) drugs, and (punk) rock and roll, but Cox and Wool also take care to reach for some meaning in a seemingly senseless tragedy. No aspect of the film better encapsulates the meaning of punk than the scene in which Nancy takes Sid home to meet her bourgeois family, resulting in an absurdist culture clash (Nancy's grandpa turns to a bleary, topless Sid and asks, "So, are you going to make an honest woman out of our Nancy...?"). And Sy Richardson's methadone caseworker speaks for the filmmakers and the audience when he scolds the heroes, “You could be selling healthy anarchy. But as long as you're addicts, you’ll be full of shit.” The film acknowledges the strange glamor of punk amid its ugliness, without underselling in the least the brutal existential horror of Sid and Nancy's diseased "no exit" lifestyle. It's an age-old story of achieving immortality by paying thr ultimate price.

Groucho Reviews

I went into Sid and Nancy as a pretty decent Sex Pistols fan, a huge Gary Oldman fan, and an overall trust in the judgment of a few reviews, and the recommendation from Criterion. If you don’t know too much about Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy, you may not want to read on, because this will contain various spoilers about the story, and their lives. I have to admit that I don’t know too much about Sid Vicious as a person, his life outside the media, what Nancy was like outside what the interviews I‘ve seen show, or how the Sex Pistols lived in general, so I can’t comment too much about the historical accuracy of the film, outside of a few things. I went into this film pretty certain it would at the least be a good movie, but I walked out of it pretty disappointed, and ultimately confused about what the point of it was.

The movie follows Sid Vicious from the time he met Nancy, to the time of her death, showing his time with Sex Pistols and his drug abuse. I personally enjoyed the moments with the Sex Pistols best, because despite having an actor not looking anything like Johnny Rotten, or really sounding anything like him at all, the live shows were overall pretty good, and really felt like an effort that went further than the performance itself. What’s strange though is to know just how popular Sex Pistols are, but see them playing shows for maybe 10-20 people. I’m sure their shows were small, but the movie doesn’t so much as imply the important their music had on punk rock. But that’s kind of beside the point. What really hurt everything in between and after these shows was how incoherent almost everything is, most notably the dialogue. Between the accents, the bizarre manner in which everybody is speaking, and the slur of alcohol and whatever other drugs everybody is supposed to be on, every line is spat out and nearly impossible to understand. After a while I actually turned the subtitles on, and learned that the dialogue is hardly written to advance story, but merely to highlight scenes. Some scenes seem so out of place that it feels like an amateur film, or some sick fan film, shot by somebody idolizing Sid and embracing his drug use.

But, once Sid Vicious moves on after his time with Sex Pistols, the movie really just seems to spiral further and further into a messy, blurry, and seemingly pointless montage of moments that no mother would ever want to know their son or daughter for. It’s almost as if it’s an anti-drug movie, or an anti-punk rock movie. It could best be used to exemplify the excellence that is Gary Oldman and his skill. Accurate to the sound and look aside, though he did do a pretty impressive job, Oldman shows us that no matter what, he can transform into a completely different person, and it’s really the highlight of the film, and the only reason why I’d recommend it. His role, like everything else he’s done, is so stand out, and so dedicated, it’s shocking that he’s not more famous, or offered bigger roles. Chloe Webb, who played Nancy, might as well be Nancy herself. Having only seen an interview or two with Nancy, I can compare only a tiny bit. But, she seems to do a great job of portraying a very difficult person. The unfortunate side of this is that her character is such an annoyance, and such a difficult person, that it becomes a challenge just to watch the film. Her personality is the equivalent to having birds constantly attacking your hair, while screeching. By the time the movie ended, I was actually tired from her voice, and her over-the-top, exaggerated worship of Vicious and drugs. It’s just overpowering. I really hate to sound like I’m personally attacking these people, I’m not, I just can’t see the point of the film in nearly any aspect. Was the intent to show people that you wouldn’t like? If so, bravo. But they really went overboard.

Her death was a little depressing, and I will admit that I did feel pretty crappy during the scene. But this is just one of the many scenes that make no sense to me. Now, I’m not a conspiracy nut when it comes to her death. But what is known is that Sid woke up, she was dead, and he denied having a part in it. It’s even speculated that drug dealers did it, and the movie makes notice of drug dealers not liking her whatsoever. But it doesn’t leave her death as open as all that. Instead, we see Sid stab her in the stomach, and fall asleep. Not a lot of mystery there. After her death, you would think that it would show him in jail, getting clean, having his mother bail him out, and then him dying. Or maybe at least mentioning the fact that he had another girlfriend. Something, but no. Instead, it takes a very vague, and very bizarre turn. We see him leaving jail, getting a slice of pizza, and then dancing with three children in the street. A cab slowly approaching, and in the back is Nancy. After getting in the cab with her, it’s driven toward the city, and we see the three children run after the car. After a fade out, it tells us that Sid died on X date of a heroin overdose. The entire scene is a mystery to me, and it sort of makes you realize how little sense the entire film makes, all the way to the very end. Other than Oldman, the film has nothing compelling, poor editing, and virtually no style or personality. It’s just messy.

I’ll be fair and just admit something. There are many movies I didn‘t like, while many did, and I can understand and see where they‘re coming from. I know why people like some movies, and why I didn‘t. But this film? I just don‘t get it. I don’t. I don’t get the romanticism behind living in a daze, unaware of what country you’re in, what day it is, how to walk, or anything else. I don’t get any of it, and the movie really doesn’t help make sense of it. Sid comes off as an incompetent musician, purposely bad singer, and overall horrible person. Totally unlikable, undependable, useless, and stupid. This could all be untrue to how he really was, and I could be a jerk for thinking it. Underneath it all, Sid and Nancy could both be truly great people, but I’d never know, because the only film I’ve seen on the couple portrays them in the most negative light possible, and leaves you wondering why anybody cares about these people. Maybe that‘s the point, and if it is, then I‘m even more confused. But I seriously doubt that was the intent. If you aren’t a fan of the lifestyle, see the movie for Gary Oldman if it’s available. I wouldn’t recommend putting forth the time and money to get the Criterion, and I don’t think it’s really worth owning if you find a copy for a retail price. But, if you want to see everything with Oldman, or just know somebody that owns it and want to say you’ve seen it, then go ahead. Don’t try to make sense of it, and if you’re like me, and Bodies is your favorite Sex Pistols song, prepare to hear the worst rendition of it.