Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" (Chopper Read... sorry, I mean Ian Drury)

I went into this knowing next to nothing about Ian Dury. I knew he was a British punk, and I had an inkling that he wanted someone to hit him with their rhythm stick, but that was it. There are times when I was watching this biopic and I thought, yeah, this guy is awesome, how come I never knew about him before now? But there were also times where I cringed, and this is because the film feels very much like a flash-animated TV movie. I can get down with this to some degree, punk is supposed to be DIY (and a big part of Dury's life-adventure was about self-sufficiency), but the direction did grate on my nerves a little bit. A lot of Dury's tale is told in flashhback from within the context of one of his performances, he narrates his life like it's a TV special. When it comes to biopics about interesting people, I just want to get to the story, dammit. I'm not interested in the director's skill as a whizz-bang director, I'm not interested in how clever the script can be... I'm just interested in hearing about Ian Dury and what he did and why he did it.

If, like me, you aren't overly familiar with Dury, here's a brief summation of who he was... Dury was a working class Brit crippled by polio, and I guess he happened to be in the right place at the right time when the punk movement took off in the late '70s. He became a singer for his own band, The Blockheads, and was renowned as a controversial one-of-a-kind performer. He also became an unofficial spokesperson and advocate for the inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream society, a role that he felt was a double-edged sword (and something that led him into a lot of trouble). The first part of the film looks at his childhood and his early years, and then the second part shows him getting the fame he sought for so long and how he deals with the fawning attention of the masses.

This is British punk in all it's lairy, gaudy, cut 'n' paste theatrics. Despite later subcultural movements in the '80s and beyond, this version of punk was all about spectacle, image and attitude. Dury exemplifies this whilst also demonstrating the punk genre's place as a forum that gives voice to the marginalised. Some parts of the film use stop-motion styled editing to emulate the look of '70s and '80s music videos, but beyond these more superficial touches this is also a film of contrasts - Dury and his dad vs. Dury and his son, or even a shot of Dury drunkenly falling into a pool vs. Dury falling into a crowd at a show. It's a dense and informative work that talks as much about Ian Dury as it does about the role of punk music, but it's a shame that it couldn't cut to the chase a bit more rather than getting hung up on being 'clever' and flashy.

Anyway, despite the film's occasional tonal flaws and the continuing overcomplication of biopic films in general, this is a charismatic, brawling, chaotic and self-absorbed tale about a charismatic, brawling, chaotic and self-absorbed individual. Watch it if only for the recreation of Dury's infamous U.N. sanctioned song for the disabled, "Spasticus Autisticus". What a legend.

DIRECTOR: Mat Whitecross
WRITER/SOURCE: Paul Viragh (based on the life of Ian Dury)
KEY ACTORS: Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Ray Winstone, Olivia Williams, Noel Clarke, Toby Jones, Ralph Ineson, Arthur Davill, Mackenzie Crook, Bill Milner,

RELATED TEXTS:
- Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, an authorised biography of Ian Dury by Richard Balls.
- Other British music biopics: Control, Stoned, 24 Hour Party People, Backbeat and Sid and Nancy.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - nominated Best Actor (Andy Serkis) and Best Music.