Out On Blue Six: Human League

I watched Carol Morley's excellent documentary film Dreams of a Life again at the weekend and as a result this song has been going around my head for days...

End Transmission

The Alcohol Years (2000)

It's hard to look the person you once were in the eye. Being reminded of how naive and reckless you were as a younger person, when you were still struggling to find and claim your own identity, can be an embarrassing and painful experience. Like finding old photographs of yourself or guilty, long abandoned items in your wardrobe, you're confronted with the cringe-inducing realisation that you were once someone very different. Someone that you might not like or be able to tolerate if you met them now.

"There was this story about Alan Wise...(how he) used to like you weeing on him"

In The Alcohol Years, Carol Morley dares to confront her 16-21 year old self; a complex and complicated figure who stalked the hinterland of a post-industrial Manchester that was awaiting something to happen to it; a new dawn which ultimately turned out to be the second summer of love at the end of the decade  - a summer of love that was effectively the cities first, the previous one having been robbed by the pall of the infamous Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hyndley. 

Morley was a legendary figure, her reputation proceeding her in a manner which belied her youth as she drank and caroused her way through clubs like the Hacienda and The Boardwalk and into the bedrooms of several men and women, and sometimes for a price. The film therefore makes it clear through its interviewed participants and its striking collage of imagery that to know Carol Morley meant that you had an opinion of Carol Morley, good or bad. A night out with Carol Morley was a promise of drama, and an experience that was anything but boring. It is that mythologised status that Morley chooses to explore here, along with the mythology of Manchester itself. Electing to stay behind the camera, she develops a character that is rather ethereal, like the spectre at the feast, whilst her friends and contemporaries reminiscence about her and deliver their prized anecdotes about her behaviour either fondly or in contemptible, withering terms - behaviour that she herself can no longer recall, thanks to the effects of alcohol. In relying on these talking heads, the film creates a composite character of who Carol Morley was, whilst understanding that any story that relies on memory is understandably one of an unreliable narration as each interviewee tells their own truth.

The Alcohol Years is a film about sexual identity and the inequality at the heart of how our society perceives gender. Morley was clearly a very sexually provocative and promiscuous young woman, but she argues in the accompanying commentary that she felt the need to fulfill a sexual fantasy at a time when women were objectified on sexual terms but were perversely expected to be passive in their own sexuality. Some of the contributors refer to her as a sexual predator, with a very masculine approach to sex, and the age-old issue of sexual promiscuity being rewarded in men yet condemned in women once again raises its ugly head. Psychologically, it's interesting to consider Morley's behaviour as a direct result of her father's suicide - were these series of one night stands a way of seeking love and affection from men like Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley and promoter Alan Wise who could be considered father figures? - and the recollection that Morley would often go to clubs dressed as a little girl playing with toys such as train sets (a potent sexual symbol in itself) or a toy duck on a wheel whilst at the same time offering the contradictory agenda - seemingly subconsciously -  of being sexually provocative, is also an intriguing one to analyse. 

Equally intriguing is the notion of lines of behaviour that should not be crossed; it's clear that Morley lost or offended several female friends as a direct result of her wild behaviour, her bisexuality, and her prostitution of herself to the likes of Alan Wise, (who paid both her and her fellow bandmate, Debby Turner, £50 to sleep with him, which they later bought a meal with - a much anticipated but unedifying introduction to Chinese cuisine) and to the strangers she picked up for paid sex in London whilst visiting New Order in the recording studio (and was Bizarre Love Triangle written about her and Debby?). These are all discussed as part of her legend, whilst some wonder if she was 'sexually ill' at this stage in her life, arguing such acts were of transgression rather than free will, an in built desire and need to be liked played out in the most unsuitable and dangerous of manners. 

But equally The Alcohol Years is a film that is as much about Manchester and the people who happily participated with the film as it is about Morley herself. Mancunian pop cultural icons such as the aforementioned Wise (now sadly no longer with us having died of a broken heart last year following his young daughter's suicide) who gleefully and cheekily produces his cock for the camera, Tony Wilson, Vini Reilly, Bruce Mitchell and Dave Haslam to name but a few all appear, with the latter commenting on how you could bump into like-minded people in the city one week and the next they'd be on Top of the Pops. The implication is that it is this very generation, through their talents and boisterous antics, helped bring about what Manchester was unconsciously waiting for. But that to do so would always ultimately conclude with the betrayal of leaving the north for a new life and a career in the south, leaving only the mythology behind. Morley's story ends with her own betrayal, departing for London the day after a tenth anniversary celebration of punk put on by Factory Records at the G-MEX in mysterious circumstances. Realising that the myth is key, Morley refuses to elaborate on the reasons for the self-imposed exile that brought about the death of her old self and the birth of the new, allowing the film to end in a very effective way as various summaries of her character ring in her ears and run her out of town in a dark and impressionistic sequence that suggest Morley was worryingly close to the edge. 

It can be argued that this is a somewhat egotistical venture, a filmmaker making a film about herself. But Morley wisely elects to remain behind the camera and to include the most scathing of criticisms about her past behaviour in the final cut. "Why don't you just have therapy?" one of the more persistently critical contributors argues at one point, but the fact remains that the ghost has been laid to rest and has in the process left behind a remarkable film from which there lies a clear line to Dreams of a Life.  

Still Life (2013)

Anyone who was rightly moved by Carol Morley's beautiful 2011 documentary Dreams of a Life about Joyce Vincent, a woman whose body lay undetected in her flat for three years, will be equally moved by Still Life, a fictional tale about such overlooked bereavements and the one man whose precise and methodical nature means he is dedicated to giving them the fitting send off they deserve. Be warned though, you better have some tissues at the ready because this one is heartbreaking.

There's more than a touch of Mike Leigh to the proceedings too, most notably in the hangdog, forlorn features of Eddie Marsan, a long time Leigh leading man and an equally long time favourite of mine, in the central role of John May, the civil servant whose job it is to try and locate the friends and relatives of life's flotsam and jetsam now recently deceased. It's May's personal investment and dedication to his thankless role that immediately endears him to the audience, especially when we see his superiors and colleagues who view these literal lost souls as a chore to sign off on as soon as possible. When we see that May lives the same kind of lonely existence as those who cares for in their demise, living a solitary, pernickity existence eating tuna and toast at home, our hearts go out to him and, when  those superiors decide to make May redundant we are angry and saddened for him, this precise funny little man of almost Chaplinesque status who refuses to let his last case - a neighbour from the same block of flats - go without his usual exemplary commitment.

Made in 2013 but only released to the cinema and DVD market earlier this year, Still Life is a wonderfully subdued melancholic film which writer/director Uberto Pasolini invests with several equally subdued and subtle sight gags, tipping the wink to an audience who has given this story of lives lost and lives half lived its undivided attention. It’s a deeply touching experience with a sublime and plaintive score from Rachel Portman that, like Marsan, could easily have come from a Mike Leigh film too.  

As May's last case takes him (and us) on an odyssey to find people who cared about his deceased neighbour enough to attend the funeral he so painstakingly and lovingly arranges, he finds the man's estranged daughter Joanna Froggatt and, for a time, it seems like the film is about to tie itself up in a beautiful, sentimental, albeit cliched bow...but for all its subtlety this is a subversive little film and I was unprepared for where it took us come those final moments, which left me deeply moved and rather heartbroken.

Extremely recommended.

The Final Remains of What Remains

The phone will go off the hook tonight as the final part of Tony Basgallop's gripping and creepy whodunnit What Remains commences at 9pm

I've been glued to this distinctive mystery for the past three Sunday nights. A real quality drama that seems to take its cue from the tragic real life death of Joyce Carol Vincent (from the excellent Carol Morley documentary film Dreams Of A Life) in that it concerns the death and undiscovered body of a young woman (played in flashbacks by the brilliant Jessica Gunning) whose neighbours seemed to barely notice living, let alone her 'disappearance'

Or did they?

Each episode has shown that each neighbour knows more than they were originally letting on. More, they've all got their distinctly ugly sides, possible motives for murder and skeletons in the cupboard. Week by week the intrigue has been drawn out like infection from a poultice.

A great cast of familiar faces and accomplished actors has been headed up by David Threlfall as this year's most interesting copper, DI Len Harper; a man who wouldn't even let retirement get in the way of him discovering the truth and bringing the culprit (or culprits) to justuce.

Dreams Of A Life (2011)

I first heard about Carol Morley's docu-film Dreams Of A Life on BBC1's Film 2011. The review instantly caught my attention at first because the recreations starred Zawe Ashton, the beautiful and stylish young actress from Channel 4's Fresh Meat, but then it hooked me in with the story; a true story about Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman whose body lay undiscovered in her bedsit for three year. I was immediately fascinated as to how such a tragedy could be allowed to occur. Sadly because my local cinema is shite, I didn't get to see the film until this week when it received its premiere on Channel 4. Now, having seen it, I know that it is a film that will stay with me.

It's one of my bugbears that we currently live in a dislocated society. Contact and relationships are second hand catered for by third party social networking like Facebook and Twitter. No one seems to make the effort to actively engage with anyone these days and that's worrying, because the more we are less inclined, the more tragedies like Joyce can occur. 

The film depicts one hell of a mystery, still unresolved. A seemingly bright successful and popular woman who collected a host of friendships and relationships from the 80s through to the 90s was allowed to fall through the cracks and effectively disappear, only to reappear as a headline in 2006 when it was reported her skeletal, decomposing body was found in her flat, on her sofa in front of a television set playing out its programmes to nobody, dust covered wrapped Christmas presents lay around her, having never found their receivers.

How could one woman drop off the radar? Not just from friends and family, but from official channels like the electricity board or the council? Unfortunately these are questions that can't fully be answered. Obviously in the case of the latter it's a ridiculous official error but in terms of the former? The film suggests through pieced together information that a violent relationship and some ill health in the late 90s led to a damaged, vulnerable and embarrassed Joyce being unable to regain her place in life, until she simply just faded away.

I guess the film's main message is not just how dislocated society has become, but also how we never really know people, even people we have loved or shared our lives closely with. People have things they want us to know and things they don't want us to know. People have secrets and it seems Joyce may have had more than most. What's telling is the conflicting statements from the people that know here give in the film's many talking heads; She was someone who had no drive, she was someone who had a lot of ambition. She was someone with a great singing voice, Joyce couldn't sing. Even a spoken voice recording of Joyce draws conflicting responses with her first boyfriend Martin (who comes across as a genuinely likeable and loving man who will clearly be haunted forever by the loss of whom he admits was the 'love of his life') claiming the first half of the statement sounds like her, but the second doesn't. Whilst her work colleagues from her last role claim the second part of the statement captures the essence of Joyce. As one person suggests, Joyce was a chameleon. And one can't help but think that we're all essentially like that, offering certain guises or sides of ourselves to whoever we are with at the time. The vast majority of the talking heads depict people who genuinely cared for Joyce and loved her, which makes the manner of her death all the more mystifying, saddening and frustrating. Only one of the interviewees, a black boyfriend called Alistair left me cold, primarily because he seemed to have a beef with Joyce's attitude towards her ethnicity, claiming in a roundabout way that she seemed to not want to be black, and that maybe if she was more true to herself she wouldn't have become so alienated. It's a rather simplistic statement and grossly unfair, and one I imagine that says a little more about his own opinions of ethnicity than it does of hers. It is Alistair who is the charmer that states Joyce couldn't sing, along with the claim that before she went out with him 'she had boyfriends, now she had a man' and that being with him was her 'living the dream', a dream she couldn't allow herself to have. Pass me the bucket!

The recreations that litter the film are handled very well by the aforementioned Zawe Ashton as Joyce, even though she has little more to do than look glam and beautiful or tired and weary, depending on the stages of Joyce's life. I did like some of the directorial touches such as Joyce's 21st, which sees Zawe in a party setting conversing and laughing around a table with no other actors. She is alone. It's a great metaphor for the ultimate isolation of Joyce's all too tragic life. 

I heartily recommend this one, a powerful documentary indeed.