The man, the myth, the legend

Britain in 1976 was a riot. Garbage strikes. Hospital walkouts. Factory closings.
But from the perspective of 24 Hour Party People, the latest film from Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, The Claim), Manchester 1976-1992 was also a riot of another sort: of colors and characters.

As told by far-from-humble narrator Tony Wilson (played by the droll comedian Steve Coogan), Manchester was even at times a laugh riot because it's almost comical how much foresight and how little forethought Wilson possessed when he co-founded Factory Records, the label that defined the era and inspired the film.

Working with a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, Wilson follows the British tradition of breaking the fourth wall as he tells of Factory Records' rise and demise and the artists whose hopes rose and finances sank with it. He recounts the heyday of the bands Joy Division, New Order, the Happy Mondays and the world-famous dance club, the Hacienda.

The movie opens with Wilson — a news reporter on Manchester's Grenada TV (a position he retains in real life today) — addressing the camera/audience while on assignment on a hang glider. Expect greatness from Factory Records' artists, he warns ... right before crashing into a hill. He's Icarus in full flight, discovering the hard way that championing artistic freedom isn't free.

But before there was a Factory Records to champion, there were its players, whom the film introduces at a Sex Pistols show in Manchester in June 1976. Among the 42 people attending are members of the Stiff Kittens (later Warsaw, then Joy Division and finally New Order). There are members of the Buzzcocks. There's Factory Records producer Martin Hannett. And there's Wilson. More importantly, there's raw talent and ambition.

Wilson expertly harnesses the baritone underbelly of the Manchester scene as Factory Records artists like Joy Division and A Certain Ratio offer an angular, introverted but danceable alternative to the era of arena rock and disco. Factory would also encompass a faux funk sound when it signed the Happy Mondays, shown as slurring sods in the film's second act. Along with New Order's synth-pop, the Happy Mondays' ecstasy-addled acid house hybrid would herald Britain's turn from dirge to dance. Unfortunately, they'd also herald Factory Records' downturn. But before Wilson can claim that he invented Britain's club culture, he exhibits Factory's claustrophobic beginnings.

Robby Müller's frenetic, handheld digital video work captures the gloom, grit and momentary grandeur of Factory. The perpetual blur of action perfectly captures the peripheral nature of the tale's telling. After all, only so much is truth. After, say, Wilson's wife gets shagged in the loo by the Buzzcocks' Howard Devoto, the film halts on a smirking janitor — the real Devoto, one of many cameos — saying he doesn't remember it quite that way. When faced with the decision, however, Wilson's prattling postmodernist simply says, "Print the legend."

24 Hour Party People, however, is not a story of legends, or even harsh realities. Addressing the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis and the inevitable cannibalizing of the Hacienda, the dance club built by drug dealers with New Order's money, it's hard to separate harsh from hallowed. On the surface it's the story of Wilson, the Factory and the turning of the wheel of fate full-circle, but at its heart it's the story of, as Wilson puts it, "an experiment in human nature."

Ultimately, 24 Hour Party People is about unnerving idealism. Ending in the "Madchester" era of applauding the DJ, appropriately the man behind the music, 24 Hour Party People is a colorful cut-and-paste tribute to an era when, stabbing in the dark for anything, a major creative artery was struck. In similar haphazard vein, 24 Hour Party People manages a finger on the pulse.
tony.ware@creativeloafing.com