Four stars. Not rated, with profanity, sensuality and plenty of recreational drug use
By Derrick Bang
Director Mat Whitecross’
exhilarating indie, released three years ago but only now making its way on our side of the Atlantic, is a valentine to music fans of all ages, but particularly
for those of us who — as teenagers — fell madly, passionately and hopelessly in
love with One Special Album that ruled our lives, awake or asleep.
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| With the concert grounds tantalizingly close — but still unapproachable, thanks to high fences and numerous guards — the situation seems hopeless for, from left, Little Gaz (Adam Long), Zippy (Jordan Murphy), Tits (Elliot Tittensor) and Sally (Emilia Clarke). |
It became a personal soundtrack to
eating, studying and falling in love: the songs that we discussed and dissected
endlessly and enthusiastically to like-minded friends.
Whitecross and scripter Chris
Coghill haven’t merely depicted the obsessive zeal of such devotion; their film
is constructed with an inventive, vibrant bounce that spills youthful bliss
from every frame. In that context, Spike
Island belongs in the company of like-minded, music-laden predecessors such
as The Commitments, That Thing You Do and, more recently, Begin Again.
All that said, American viewers
are warned to anticipate accents so thick that subtitles wouldn’t have been
amiss. I know, intellectually, that all these characters are speaking English
in this British production, but the working-class Manchester accent is thick
enough to give the most impenetrable Irish brogue a run for its money.
Which is to say, much as I
enjoyed this first exposure, the eventual home-viewing experience will be even
more satisfying, when I can turn on the DVD’s closed captions.
Coghill’s story, set in
Manchester during the spring of 1990, follows five rough ’n’ tumble teenage
lads who — like many of their fellow “Madchesterians” — have succumbed to the
eponymous debut album by The Stone Roses, released the summer before and still
ruling the charts. Beloved in great part because the band members were
Manchester natives themselves, the album touched a nerve in rock and punk fans
already marginalized by recession, mass unemployment, class wars and the recent
poll tax riots.
Rock-inflected movements come in
many sizes. Although lacking the massive historical shift signaled by the 1960s
British invasion, The Stone Roses definitely fueled a Manchester-based
mini-revolution that brought a shimmering, jangling illusion of hope to a
subset of Briton that felt helpless and beaten down.
Mind you, at first blush this
story’s young heroes — Gary “Tits” Titchfield (Elliot Tittensor), Darren
“Dodge” Howard (Nico Mirallegro), Chris “Zippy” Weeks (Jordan Murphy), “Little
Gaz” Duffy (Adam Long) and “Penfold” Andrew Peach (Oliver Heald) — seem little
more than hooligans. They’re introduced while laying waste to their school with
multiple cans of paint: a shrill anarchic act inspired by The Stone Roses
themselves. (Check the LP cover of the aforementioned album.)
