We round out our reviews of the Decline trilogy with a look at its excellent, severely underappreciated third installment.
The third installment of the Decline
of Western Civilization trilogy
brings the story full-circle by revisiting the L.A. punk scene
fifteen years later... but it does it with a completely different
tone and attitude. Rather than being a concert film with documentary
elements, it is primarily a documentary about the lives and troubles
of the kids in the scene, which also features some concert film
accents. The result is a surprisingly strong and emotional, very
meaningful film. In fact, it is probably the strongest documentary of
the three, even though it doesn't pack quite the same musical punch.
The
original Decline is
second to none as an intense, adrenaline-fueled, really well-made
document of the early years of American punk. But its big weakness is
that its editing is obviously skewed to make its punk subjects look
as bad as possible for the sake of entertainment. It was pretty
dismissive and disdainful of many of the punks interviewed, and while
some of them made some really good points, the editing clearly
favored train-wreck moments. While its iconic reputation is
well-deserved based on the concert footage alone, it felt very much
like a documentary about punk made by an outsider who was skeptical
at best, and it didn't have as much depth as it should have. A decade
and a half later, Decline Part III feels
very much like Penelope Spheeris going back to the scene with a more
open mind, making the deeper, more honest and emotionally attuned
portrait that the first film could/should have been. While the title
was a snarky jab at punk rock the first time around, this time The
Decline of Western Civilization
feels like a very dramatically appropriate name for a story of lost,
struggling teenagers living in pain, addiction and poverty, who
genuinely do feel like society is crumbling out from under them.
Decline Part III
focuses on the subculture of homeless teen and early-twentysomething
punks – so-called Gutter Punks – living on the streets and in the
abandoned buildings of L.A. in the mid-90s. But while the first film
kept a semi-judgmental distance from its subjects and never got a
sense for the emotions and backgrounds behind its young interviewees'
anger and disillusionment, this sequel really wants to get to know
them, and it extends them quite a bit of compassion. While they still
have a lot of half-formed, poorly articulated animosities towards
authority and political bodies (what young punk doesn't? We've all
been there if we were in the punk scene), it becomes very clear that
these kids have far more specific and personal reasons for coming to
the scene, of exactly the sort that the first film didn't bother
exploring. Most of them are homeless because they fled abusive family
members, they are almost all alcoholics, many of them struggle with
depression that the constant drinking medicates, and they all
gravitated towards the scene because it gives them a strong family
unit where they can protect themselves against the violence to which
they had previously been subjected. Rather than portraying them as
rebels without a cause, like the first film often did, we see that
they really do have each others' backs, and work hard to give each
other the safe-haven that they've never known. As one girl says,
“they're my family, they're my support, they're my love, they're
my... everything.” The problem is that since they are almost all
broke, homeless, and addicted, their ability to create that
safe-haven just really isn't there, despite their best intentions.
Director
Penelope Spheeris focuses on a small handful of these teen and
twentysomthing gutter punks as our main characters, and gets to know
them very well. There are a lot of interviews – like in the
original, shot against a white wall lit by a dangling lightbulb in
the shot – but she also follows them around as they panhandle for
money, struggle to find squats or semi-sheltered outdoor areas in
which to sleep, and party with their makeshift family in the one
apartment to which they all have access. While it does have moments
of humor like the first two Decline films
did, this quickly becomes an emotionally intense and heavy, very sad
journey. This emotional depth gives even more punch to the anger and
intensity of the mostly-hardcore punk music captured in the film,
because we know just what depths of despair that intensity rises
from.
While
the focus of the film is definitely on the homeless kids in the
scene, and the concert sequences are more of accents serving that
story, those sequences are once again excellent. They are shot with a
raw, gritty, handheld intensity that puts you right in the mosh pit,
and all the vocals are screamed in intense close-ups. The bands
featured are Naked Agression, Litmus Green, Final Conflict, and The
Resistance (who were themselves homeless). By their fiercely
independent, hardcore nature these bands never became as widely-known
in the mainstream as some of their counterparts from the original
like X, Black Flag, and The Circle Jerks, but they are pretty classic
'90s hardcore, and their performances are captured excellently. Fans
of the bands or hardcore in general will really like what they see
here, and the film is a solid introduction for those who are only
discovering the bands because of this film. While I missed their
initial wave captured here, I caught Naked Aggression's mid-2000s
resurgence (fiercely political with a passion for activism, they were
a great punk band to rail against the dark days of the Bush era), so
I loved seeing their roots captured through Spheeris's awesomely
kinetic camerawork. The bands get much more nuanced portrayals this
time around as well: Naked Aggression in particular gets a lot of
depth, as we learn about their classical music training and history
of playing benefit shows for rape crisis centers, shelters for abused
women, and AIDS research. Plus, those who dismiss hardcore as the
sound of untalented people banging on instruments get to see just how
wrong that stereotype can be when the members of Naked Aggression
dust off their classical piano and french horn skills. The strong
portrayal of the musicians makes me wish that there was a bit more
concert footage in the film: while its narrative focus on the
lives of its subjects was definitely the right choice, at a short
running time of 85 minutes there certainly was room to add in a few
more music sequences without harming the story arc.
Despite
how excellent a film The Decline of Western Civilization
Part III is, it has remained far
more obscure than either of its cult-classic predecessors; in fact, I
would not be surprised if most readers of this review have not seen
it. This is truly unfair, as I can honestly say that Decline
III is more than just a good
rock doc: it is a socially important documentary. However, there is a
good reason for this obscurity: last year's Decline Trilogy
blu-ray box set was actually the film's first ever wide release.
While Decline I and II
had been out-of-print and
outlandishly rare for over two decades, they were at least
distributed on VHS by pretty major labels (Media Home Entertainment
for part 1, RCA-Columbia for part 2), and were video store staples in
the '80s and early-90s. Part 3, on the other hand, was self-released
by Penelope Spheeris in both its theatrical run and a limited home
video run, making it certainly the most scarce, if maybe not the most
pricey. As such, it is probably a new experience to all but the most
serious fans who pick up the box set. It is definitely an experience
to seek out. It may not have the same classic reputation as the
original, but it deserves it. Not only does it live up to the
reputation of the Decline series
as an excellent concert film, it also corrects the first film's flaws
and gives us a genuinely powerful and thoughtful documentary.
Don't be a punk. Share this review.
Don't be a punk. Share this review.
Score
-
Christopher S. Jordan