There are very few rock & roll films that can honestly be considered must-haves (A Hard Day’s Night, This is Spinal Tap) and even fewer that are legitimate features about a band rather than simply starring one.  When rock and film come together, the results tend to be a misguided marriage, doomed by an inappropriate venue for the music, and they usually turn out kitchy (The Ghost Goes Gear), self-serving (Madonna: Truth or Dare) or downright idiotic (Cool As Ice).

    Music documentaries can be a tricky thing, as you need a tone that suits the feel of the musician being documented.  A by-the-numbers, A&E-style “Biography” approach is fine for a bland artist like, say, Neil Diamond, but someone like Bob Dylan requires a special, darker touch, as demonstrated by D. A. Pennebaker in the excellent Don’t Look Back.

    The Filth and the Fury is a documentary on English punk icons The Sex Pistols, and it works so brilliantly because director Julien Temple knows the band and decided to go for a much more experimental style to compliment their persona.  The typical interviews with the band are there, but extraneous viewpoints from outside the immediate circle of those directly involved with the group—fans, relatives, other musicians who talk about being influenced—are notably missing.  The only folks given interview time in new footage are the band members themselves and their manager Malcolm McLaren.

    Of course, none of this would matter if the subjects were given nothing interesting to speak about.  Fortunately, Temple has known the band for years, having previously told the same story from the perspective of McLaren in The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.  The conversations are steered in the right directions, with no topic getting too much attention and the film never becomes bogged down in piddling details.  Exact dates and times are, for the most part, cast aside simply because they’re really not relevant to the evolution of the band.

    The film follows the career of the group from their formation through their prime to their eventual break-up after the death of base player Sid Vicious.  Healthy analysis is given to pretty much all of their phases, from their original motivation as a response to the Labor Party’s broken promises to the working class of England to the dissent within the band, proving that proper anarchy can never rule as its’ greatest enemy is itself.  Witness a British Counselor call the group “The antithesis of humankind,” and Johnny Rotten’s assertion that the band, to the fans, was about “being beautiful by not being beautiful.”  It’s helpful that the band was together for just slightly over two years, allowing for just the right amount of depth to each segment of the group’s history.

    This is all just good documentary filmmaking, however.  What Temple has truly deviated from the standard form is the montage of images on the screen itself.  The filmed interviews with the group are seen infrequently, and then only in silhouette.  For the rest of the running time, Temple has assembled a vast mixture of filmed media, ranging from home movies to time-sensitive commercials to footage of a British production of Richard III to a young Shane McGowan singing “Anarchy in the U.K.”  It’s all well thought-out, timed perfectly to the interviews that serve as narration.

    The Filth and The Fury is an incredibly researched, brilliantly assembled piece of work on one of the most influential bands of our time.  Quite simply, it belongs on the shelf of anyone who’s ever listened to punk rock, right next to The Decline of Western Civilization.  Buy it.  On DVD.  Now.