Review
Tripping on ego
24 Hour Party People (directed by Michael Winterbottom)
Reviewed by Adam Hartman
24 Hour Party People bills itself as a tribute to "Madchester" and its unique contribution to music and popular culture in Britain as seen through the eyes of its narrator and central character Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan).
Wilson was the moving spirit behind the Factory record label, which launched the pioneering new wave and indie bands Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays, and the Hacienda club which was at the centre of the dance culture craze of the late eighties and early nineties.
An ambitious director could try to make an epic film chronicling Manchester, its people and music against a backdrop of industrial decline in late twentieth century Britain.
Thankfully Michael Winterbottom rejects epic in favour of a mock-epic which pokes fun at Tony Wilson’s capacity to mythologise about himself and which casts him in the role of tragic anti-hero who rises and falls on the wheel of fortune and is brought down by the size of his ego.
This makes for an entertaining film. Coogan successfully portrays Wilson both as a pretentious "post-modernist" prat and as a visionary with the energy and determination to make his dream come true – at least for a time.
Although as narrator Wilson says that the film is not about himself but about Manchester and its music, in reality it is about him above all and the mark which he left on the city. In the final scene Wilson has a vision of himself – as God – which I suppose gives a whole new meaning to the expression "God made Manchester".
However the focus on Wilson means that so much which should have been there is barely glimpsed or left out altogether. We see plenty of Joy Division and the Happy Mondays representing new wave and indie but where are the Buzzcocks, Smiths, Stone Roses, James or the Fall? Weren’t they part of the story?
And behind the story there is little context. Although Wilson remarks on the irony of naming his label Factory at a time when factories were closing down all over the city, the film makes no attempt to explore what lay behind punk or acid house or what those movements meant to the thousands of young working class people whose feelings and thoughts they expressed.
The chilling suicide of Ian Curtis (lead singer of Joy Division) is portrayed with sensitivity but we are not shown into his state of mind nor do we probe the darkness behind the band’s music and lyrics.
The suggestion that the band was influenced by fascism (Joy Division was the name given to Jewish women used as prostitutes in the Nazi concentration camps) is dismissed by Wilson with a quip about post-modernism.
Similarly the dance floor scenes later on in the film do not do full justice to the acid house movement although they do convey something of its joyful spirit. The thousands of young people who came to the parties are there in the background but we do not hear their voices.
It was these young people who made rave culture happen and like punks before them they held up two fingers to the state and challenged the boundaries of what capitalism will accept.
They organised illegal raves in squatted fields and warehouses, taking over private property and bypassing the commercial club scene. The state reacted by breaking up raves and criminalising the movement through the Criminal Justice Act.
The film charts the demise of the Hacienda as drug gangs fought to control the supply of ecstasy and acid, leading to shootings outside and even inside the club.
Dealers also took control of the door policy and started to turn away party goers who didn’t "fit".
This completely contradicted the ideal at the heart of rave culture – the right of everybody to enjoy themselves and the desire to dissolve the boundaries which separate people in everyday life under capitalism.
Winterbottom doesn’t ask these questions. But perhaps it isn’t fair to criticise him for this. He simply presents the story and leaves it for viewers to ask their own questions. Where the film falls down is in its choice of narrator.
The story of Madchester could be told so much better by the people who made it their own. But don’t let that put you off. Take this film if you want a good nostalgia trip spiked with some good laughs. And enjoy.