FREE ON YOUTUBE Michael Winterbottom - 24 Hour Party People

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) Michael Winterbottoms 24 Hour Party People tells the story of the Manchester music scene - from the first Sex Pistols concert to bankruptcy. The film shines with a kind of inspired madness. Based on the facts, it's insignificant for us Berliners (who weren't there!) whether we all know them. 24 Hour Party People also works by simply identifying ourselves with the hero posing in a horrible way. A guy who takes himself seriously, even though there is nothing to take seriously! Wilson, who really existed, is embodied by Steve Coogan. A kind of comic character - and that's how the concept of Winterbottom works: reality and rapture are lively whisked together and something emerges that is much more truthful than a "normal" documentary could be! Wilson is a lanky guy with a doggy face and the ability to recite banal stuff with an urgency as if it were the end of the world. A sincerely insane man! During the opening scene we see Wilson attending his first Sex Pistols concert in Manchester. In this (as well as other sequences) Michael Winterbottom mixes footage material with played passages. Something happens at night that changes rock music forever. But the Sex Pisols still fail because of Sid Vicious's legendary murderous suicide. I think the Sex Pistols were so famous because they failed! Had they been successful, they would inevitably have become commercial. Basically Johnny Rotten "died in the tube" years after the band - a quite remarkable achievement! For Tony Wilson "anarchy" has nothing to do with politics, but with his condition. It's the state of mind! Wilson is sure to have seen the future and founds Factory Records with his partner. They offer nothing for sale, no back catalogue, no contracts. With his own blood he signs the agreement not to conclude any contracts. The rest is history, Factory establishes itself as one of the most successful labels ever. Joy Division or Happy Mondays belong to Factory and the label founds a club where all the money for ecstasy is spent. Wilson is not interested in all that. He explains that he can't offer anything to investors who want to buy Factory. No back catalogue, no contracts: "We are an experiment in human nature. I protected myself from the dilemma of selling out by having nothing to sell." A truly endearing character who speaks in strange film dialogues. Nothing of him sounds real! 24 Hour Party People fortunately doesn't work according to the principle of nostalgic transfiguration of a bygone musical era. The film is staged in the spirit of Wilson, embodying the insanity of Factory Records! Michael Winterbottom is just as fanatical a filmmaker and lover as Wilson was as a "label" operator! He loves his characters with all his heart and understands what began with the Sex Pistols and was destroyed in the 90s. The film doesn't take itself seriously; once Wilson looks directly into the camera and tells us that a scene is missing (which would certainly be on DVD). No plan, no strategy, just an attitude! This is punk and Winterbottom has internalized it.