Country: UK
Genre: Drama
Direction: Mat Whitecross
Cast: Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Olivia Williams, Bill Milner
A biography of Ian Dury who was stricken with polio at a young age and defied expectations by becoming one of the founder of the punk-rock scene in Britain in the 1970s.
Download Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)
Movie Review:
Whilst the title is borrowed from one of its lead character’s biggest hits, this movie has plenty of sex, drugs and rock & roll as it tells Ian Dury’s life story. Rightly so; a movie about rock & roll should be rock & roll. This is something the Brits seem to do better than the Americans, whose recent attempts at music biopics have produced lugubrious, unilluminating films like Ray and Walk the Line. S&D&R&R is in the vein of 24 Hour Party People, where the film isn’t just trying to tell an artist’s story, but find the cinematic equivalent of their music and their spirit.
S&D&R&R announces its theatrical approach to its subject by beginning in a theatre, with Dury narrating his own story, before whizzing through the first of several animated pop art montages created by Peter Blake (who taught Dury at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s). But even the film’s hectic visual style struggles to keep up with the sheer energy generated by the its star, Andy Serkis.
Serkis has always been a larger-than-life actor, sometimes too large for the roles and the films he’s in. This may be a polite way of calling him a ham. But he’s tremendous here, inhabiting every aspect of the role with total conviction. Too often actors aren’t quite believable as pop stars, but Serkis carries off the concert scenes magnificently, having recorded the songs with the original Blockheads.
Eschewing a conventional structure, S&D&R&R pieces together Dury’s character from moments in his life, often jumping back in time to his childhood trapped in a school for disabled children (Dury contracted polio as a child which left him crippled for life) and his longing for his distant father (a touchingly pathetic Ray Winstone). From amongst the scattershot narrative emerges Dury’s difficult, irresponsible relationship with his son Baxter (Milner). It’s a relief when Mat Whitecross finally focuses on this story and gives the crazy camera angles and choppy editing a rest to allow some emotion out.
As engrossing and enjoyable as this film is, it doesn’t take the rock biopic anywhere new because Dury’s story doesn’t go anywhere new. Okay, he overcame disability, but once Dury hits the top of the charts we enter very familiar territory: drugs, booze, marital difficulties, band arguments, writer’s block. It’s the same old story about success being the enemy of art. This film suggests that Dury’s mojo was reignited when he was invited to write music for the International Year of the Disabled and he responded with the controversial Spasticus Autisticus. But it then ignores the last two decades of Dury’s life (he died in 2000), presumably because there’s no drama in an artist trucking along producing so-so work.
I’m not familiar with Dury’s work beyond the hits and his occasional acting roles in films like The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover. But you don’t need to know who Dury was to find his blaze of creativity inspiring. This is a fitting tribute to him without being a hagiography. Just the opposite: Dury is frequently portrayed as malicious, selfish and petty. What this film demonstrates is that for some people art is not a luxury, but a necessity; without being able to express himself through his art, Ian Dury would probably have spontaneously combusted from his own rage.
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