Over the next week, The Movie Sleuth will be chronicling the entire Decline trilogy that was just released in a phenomenal box set.
After years of anticipation – or honestly, after years of
thinking that it was never going to happen due to one of the most notorious tangles
of music rights in film history – Penelope Spheeris's iconic documentary
trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization is now on blu-ray and DVD
thanks to the wonderful team at Shout! Factory. This is such a
hotly-anticipated release – and such a massive amount of material – that one
New to Blu review just won't do the job. So we're handling the Decline collection
as separate reviews for each film, and a review of the box set itself, with its
wealth of special features that are just as expansive as the movies. First,
let's look back to 1981, when Spheeris unleashed the film that would define her
career, and set the tone for all the punk rock documentaries that followed...
The Decline of Western Civilization is a film that has taken on a mythical status over time. It's a film that almost everyone has heard of, and knows by its fabled reputation, but that until this week, very few were actually able to see legally for many years. Out of print for over two decades, Decline was one of the most famously sought-after and rare VHS and laserdisc releases among collectors, and was more commonly relegated to poor quality nth-generation bootlegs. Perhaps best known from passed-along memories from its days as a video store staple in the 1980s, and from its much more readily-available soundtrack album, it is usually thought of as the ultimate punk rock movie... but now that everyone can see it again, does it live up to the hype?
Well... yes and no. As someone who was lucky enough to actually own the Media Home Entertainment VHS of Decline, I've always had a few reservations about the film that stop me from loving it as much as I'd really like to. The tricky thing about it is that it is actually two pretty different things at the same time. As a concert film documenting the early days of the L.A. punk scene, it is absolutely amazing: an intense, vivid, adrenaline-fueled epic that genuinely captures the experience of seeing bands like X, The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and Fear at their furious beginnings, as well as The Germs during their all-too-short reign. But as a documentary about that scene and the people in it... it has some big problems. It's a very good film – in some ways a great film – but it is undeniably flawed, and has a bizarre, seemingly contradictory relationship with the very scene that it is about.
The Decline of Western Civilization is a film that has taken on a mythical status over time. It's a film that almost everyone has heard of, and knows by its fabled reputation, but that until this week, very few were actually able to see legally for many years. Out of print for over two decades, Decline was one of the most famously sought-after and rare VHS and laserdisc releases among collectors, and was more commonly relegated to poor quality nth-generation bootlegs. Perhaps best known from passed-along memories from its days as a video store staple in the 1980s, and from its much more readily-available soundtrack album, it is usually thought of as the ultimate punk rock movie... but now that everyone can see it again, does it live up to the hype?
Well... yes and no. As someone who was lucky enough to actually own the Media Home Entertainment VHS of Decline, I've always had a few reservations about the film that stop me from loving it as much as I'd really like to. The tricky thing about it is that it is actually two pretty different things at the same time. As a concert film documenting the early days of the L.A. punk scene, it is absolutely amazing: an intense, vivid, adrenaline-fueled epic that genuinely captures the experience of seeing bands like X, The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and Fear at their furious beginnings, as well as The Germs during their all-too-short reign. But as a documentary about that scene and the people in it... it has some big problems. It's a very good film – in some ways a great film – but it is undeniably flawed, and has a bizarre, seemingly contradictory relationship with the very scene that it is about.
In its concert film mode, it absolutely is the ultimate punk
movie that our pop-cultural consciousness remembers it as. The performances are
captured with a flare for filmmaking that perfectly compliments the music: raw,
gritty, handheld cinematography that gives the feeling of actually being in the
mosh pit, but that never looks sloppy or amateurish in its shakiness.
Considering that this was an era when punk was still pretty far from
mainstream, it is a miracle to have performances like these captured in such
relative high quality; Penelope Spheeris was clearly committed to doing the
live shows justice in the film's aesthetic.
From a pre-Henry-Rollins Black Flag, to X when they were
still purely a punk band, to the gloriously confrontational Fear shortly before
their notorious studio-destroying Saturday Night Live appearance, it's simply
awesome to see these bands at this point in their careers. Their performances
are every bit as intense and unrestrained as you would hope. The film is also
one of the few documents of The Germs' live shows, shortly before frontman
Darby Crash committed suicide by heroin overdose. Crash is clearly so messed up
during the set that he can barely remember his own lyrics, but they nonetheless
put on one hell of an intense performance. There are some more obscure bands
from the scene documented as well, like Catholic Discipline and The Alice Bag
Band, but Spheeris clearly could tell who the really important ones would turn
out to be. It's essential punk viewing, and while the musical and aesthetic
style could not be more different, I'd rank it alongside Jonathan Demme's
Talking Heads movie Stop Making Sense as one of the best concert films
that the 1980s produced.
But then there's the film's documentary segments. They're
very entertaining, and do a good job of maintaining the energy and the gritty
aesthetic... but they are also obviously skewed and biased in their editing in
a way that is hard to ignore. Despite all that I just said about the concert
segments being the definitive punk rock movie, Decline's documentary
mode reveals that the film is at best apathetic and skeptical of the scene, and
at worst disdainful of it. While the title The Decline of Western
Civilization seems like a snarky joke, there are times when it feels like
that genuinely could be what Penelope Spheeris thought of the punks she was
interviewing. It feels distinctly like a film made by an outsider who embarked
on the project with negative preconceived notions about her subjects, and who
allowed those assumptions to shape the whole narrative rather than giving the
interviewees a chance to change her mind.
The interviews are clearly cut in a way that focuses on the
musicians and fans at their most violent, intoxicated, and inarticulate. This
is especially true of the kids in the scene, whose interview sequence is far
too short, and almost entirely consists of quick bursts of them saying nothing
in particular, or else saying stuff that sounds either vapid, violent, or
offensive. Many of the comments are clearly taken out of context in a way that
suggests that the kids had a lot more to say, but it all wound up on the
cutting-room floor. This segment should give some sort of insight into what
makes this music so important to them, and what sorts of emotions or ideologies
it speaks to; instead, all we really get is “punks are angry.” A couple people
get to make some articulate and insightful comments, but it gets outweighed by
the noise. The same is true of the interview segments with the bands: there is
a distinct feeling that most of what they had to say about their music wound up
on the cutting-room floor in favor of the more scandalous train-wreck-ish
moments. There's a very telling moment when Black Flag's Chuck Dukowski is
talking quite eloquently about his search for a sense of meaning that took him
through a college neuroscience major, various pursuits in philosophy, and
eventually the individuality and politics of punk rock... and Spheeris
essentially cuts him off to ask him why a mohawk seemed like any kind of good
idea. Since she took such good care to give the bands strong representation in
the performance segments, it is very disappointing that she doesn't let them
tell their stories here. The result is undeniably entertaining, but is just as
undeniably an unfair portrayal, and more shallow than it should be. |
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- Christopher S. Jordan