This week we watched Alex Cox’s tragic love story of Sid and Nancy which was a romanticized yet guttural portrayal of the relationship between Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and Nancy Spungen. The film centers on their relationship and its gradual degradation due to their drug abuse that would eventually lead to both their deaths. Anyone who reads about the story of Sid and Nancy now would most probably feel pity, despite their self-destructive behaviors, as they were no older than 21 years old when they both completed their death pact. I remember reading about them in high school when I was researching about Kurt Cobain, another rock tragedy that was influenced by their unfortunate story as he found immediate interest in his wife Courtney Love because she “looked like Nancy Spungen”. She even tried to audition for the role of Nancy in the film, but was instead given the minor role of Gretchen, but has since adopted many stylistic parallels to Nancy’s iconography. Just to mention so before I get really deep and sad about the film, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen this film as one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons (Love, Springfieldian Style) reenacts basically the whole plot with Lisa and Nelson with the substitute of heroin as candy.

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The actual film is a difficult watch, as it implores a love triangle between a young couple and their addiction and shows the physical deterioration and derailment of their lives to its infamous conclusion. Cox compliments the film with a haunting soundtrack that follows the explosive punk music they originated in the beginning into a depressive new wave as their era begins to fade. 

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The portrait of punk rock is nothing short of lively and destructive, just as the stars lived their lives in the early 70s of England in their close-knit scene. An enormous cult factor of this film is the portrayal of a largely despised but later appreciated movement of punk-rock, which was counter-cultural in nature. Legs McNeil, a music journalist and witness to the punk-scene fad described the anger that justified the music “You’ve got to remember, Donny and Marie were on TV,” says McNeil. “We were tired of being nice. It was like, fuck you. The left had become as oppressive as the Republicans. They invented that political-correctness stuff. Punk was supposed to piss off everybody and make people think.” Sid Vicious was described as the “attitude” of punk by his manager Malcolm McLaren, being violent and provocative was his appeal. Nancy Spungen came into his life as a dealer for the bands in their scene, thus an introduction to the deadly lifestyle that characterized the music they were producing. The transgressive portrayal of their drug use was intended to be cautionary for Alex Cox, meant to evoke the tragedy of young lives destroyed by addiction. However the analysis of Sid and Nancy as a drug film is what pushed its cult status, illustrating how the addiction and the punk fad played hand-in-hand. In the reading Cult Cinema and Drugs, Ernest Mathijs writes

“Much like the way hippies adopted the negative term “freak” and wore it as a positive badge of difference, likewise with “trash.” In this sense, heroin films can have a wider appeal beyond mere users of the drug; they can also appeal to anyone who feels dissatisfied with the conventional parameters of everyday living.” 

Which is just how the musicians, groupies, and followers of the punk-scene in England felt when they coined the rambunctious and self-destructive essence that coincidentally would burn-out in a few years as most of their luminaries died from this behavior. While the portrayal of Sid and Nancy borders on romanticism, they were largely propped as an example in the time of their tragedy, and given no sympathy. The film offers a different understanding of their experiences, of how their screaming and intoxication was an imperfect, immature story of two kids who really cared for each other. The famous wide-shot scene of Sid and Nancy kissing in the alleyway while trash falls around them to the slow-motion guitar music of Pray for Rain, is spell-binding and creates an illusion  around their harsh reality as surreal and intoxicating as the infatuation they must have felt for each other. 

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In short, this movie made me cry. Watching the gradual collapse of the young lovers is painful but beautifully composed, and I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. While I found Chloe Webb a bit shrill in comparison to the real Nancy Spungen, she does a good job of portraying her as excruciating but loveable for her genuinity. I implore anyone who was as fascinated by her as I was to read this New York Magazine article about her misunderstood influence on punk-rock despite being widely hated for yoko-ing the Sex Pistols. As for the presentations by Tallula and Patrick, I think they complimented the transgressive nature of this week’s film in starkly different but communicative ways. I definitely am interested in watching La Haine now as I am in Love with Vincent Cassal (also ages like a fine wine) and the gritty, angsty appearance of its filming is really speaking to me in these dark times. If anyone has read this post in its entirety, here’s a pic of me and Mia being countercultural.