Over the top, did someone say? Vulgar bombast devoid of fact? My reply is that great heroes are the stuff of myth and legend, not facts. Music and facts don't mix.

Ken Russell (2004)

Sid and Nancy is not a biopic. Let’s get that out of the way. Does it pretend to be? …Maybe, but not exactly? You won’t learn much about the actual events, much less what actually transpired given as no one knows for certain. That’s not the bloody point though. It’s highly fictionalised account of the titular pair’s really quite brief relationship seeks more to evoke a mood rather than portray straight the events leading up to their demises. Do you watch Lisztomania and think Franz Liszt (Franz Liszt, Franz Liszt) really was a vampire slayer working for the Vatican? Oh, Lisztomania, you’re so crazy. That probably isn’t the fairest comparison; Lisztomania is by far the most out there of Ken Russell’s many films about (“about”) real (“real”) musicians and artists et al, but, let’s face it, if I’d said “you don’t think Antonina Miliukova really married Tchaikovsky on a sudden lusty whim, do you?” you’d probably have a harder time answering correctly. 

Alex Cox doesn’t engage in anywhere near the excesses that Russell does, but ultimately his film is in a similar mould. Though in this case, there are no great heroes (in fact, the whole thing seems largely ambivalent on the question of whether Sid Vicious was actually talented or not), which is in some way sort of the point. Just because they weren’t heroic figures, in Cox’s eyes at any rate, doesn’t mean there wasn’t an array of myth and legend surrounding the whole affair. People are perhaps less venomous in their being affronted by Russell’s delving into the myths rather than the men due to time, as the bulk of his films about real (“real”) people are about ones who’d been dead long enough that they were no longer really survived by anyone.† Neither Sid nor Nancy had been dead a decade by the time this film came out. Would the film have been less divisive if it were about, say, Jim Nasty and Sandy Rosenbaum, two totally fictional people who just happen to resemble Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in appearance and alleged behaviour? Really who can say? But, I mean, everyone knows who the characters in Velvet Goldmine (1998) are thinly veiled stand-ins for, and no one got especially upset about that… except for Bowie, I guess.

Where am I going with this? This film, by most accounts, sounds like it was made in rather a rush. Essentially in the mid ‘80s, the rumour mill was saying that one of the big studios was intending to make a film about the eponymous pair, with the freshly hot Madonna playing Nancy. Cox wasn’t impressed with these rumours, and so with his film school chums set about on his own Sid and Nancy screenplay (with Blackjack, and hookers), which they managed to convince Zenith to make. Then again, convincing them to make films on recent-ish controversy was perhaps shooting fish in a barrel; amongst other things, they also invested in films about the similarly difficult (shall we say?) relationship between Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and no less than two films about Cynthia Payne (though those two do change the names). Anyway, yeah, in addition to the alleged casting of the Hollywood backed film that evidently didn’t happen, Cox was also concerned about the film portraying them as totally punk, true heroes of the movement, yadda yadda yadda, and not on his watch apparently. As alluded to by Jon Savage, despite Cox’s background and where the money was coming from, his viewpoint and experience of the punk scene was not the British one, but rather a more American one, having left for LA around the same time as the movement was reaching its peak in the UK. To that end: straight edge. You can’t fuck the system if you’re pumped full of smack or whatever, and thus you cannot be truly punk. YOU’RE LETTIN’ THE SIDE DOWN, MAN!

As such, the section of the film set in London is rather more stiff than when the action moves stateside, as if he’s unsure of the proper context. The narrative of the film as a whole is built off of anecdotes and interviews of various people in the scene, though how the figures the film is ostensibly about feature in these stories, who knows? The opening act of the film however seems largely devoted to getting the various players set up, including a very abridged telling of the rise of the band, the band which is ironically quite peripheral to the core of the film, as well as some presumably quite laughable mistakes for people who were embedded in the scene (In retrospectives, Cox highlights the London punks’ rather American mosh-pit). It serves its purpose, but the meat of the film comes after the band go on their ill-fated American tour and Cox seems far more confident in both the milieu he’s portraying and the film he’s making. Once the band’s out of the way, realism is out the door as Sid and Nancy dance off into a dream. The colour palette ramps up and fantasy and reality mingle freely without anyone to restrain them. Indeed, the film’s use of colour is one of its most striking elements, going from gaudy technicolour majesty to washed out low contrast in accordance with the highs and lows, and by the time the pair are circling the drain, the film borders on greyscale. With it, the film bounces between being a bittersweet romance, a black comedy, and a dark drama, almost without ever really missing a beat.

The thing, as ever, rather hinges on the performances of the leads, who manage to find a good balance between their characters’ various idiosyncrasies to nevertheless come off as real people (even if they mightn’t be the real people), even if they are both conspicuously a bit old (Chloe Webb was, by this point, older than Nancy was when she died, let alone when the film was made). Gary Oldman is part of the parade who’re rather dismissive of the thing, his performance included, but the film did raise him to international notice for a reason; his ability to turn his performance on a dime without it feeling forced or fake is quite impressive. Similarly, Webb’s performance of Nancy as a flighty woman-child is nevertheless entirely human and comprehendible. For the time period, this is probably about as sympathetic a portrayal of Nancy Spungen as you were likely to get (it seems like even these days calling her a divisive figure seems generous).‡

I’d say the ultimate worth of the film is in its harrowing and horrific treatment of the pair’s downward spiral. I’ve seen complaints about the film glamourises drug use which… kind of raises the question if they’ve watched the film. It’s very blatant in its anti-drug message and ultimately, perhaps to its detriment, only really pulls one punch at the very end when it abstracts its way around showing Sid’s death. It’s probably wrong to dismiss the film purely on that, even if that one punch would’ve been the knockout; the package as a whole is handsome, funny, and affecting… unless you desperately wanted a straight recreation of the events… and even more so if you want all the pettiest of details. As I say though, the label of this film being a biopic of Sid Vicious that gets thrown about itself is rather missing the point. The thing is called Sid and Nancy for a reason, after all.

Also, noted butter spokesman John Lydon hates it. So it has that going for it.

† There are exceptions; most infamously, his hilariously unflattering take on Richard Strauss which was removed from circulation having offended the man’s family enough that they withdrew the rights for his still-very-much-in-copyright compositions. Incidentally, his works just went into the public domain this year (2020), so keep a lookout for now entirely legal showings! There’s already been one.

‡ Bear in mind, she had a history of mental health issues and was legitimately diagnosed with schizophrenia; things that presumably weren’t helped by her raging drug problem.