24 Hour Party People (2002)

Watched on 2023-09-03

Growing up in Manchester’s hinterland in the 90s Tony Wilson was always on TV, a kind of intellectual Richard Madeley, I never really knew about his involvement with the city’s music scene though. By the time I saw this film i knew a bit more, mainly from news coverage of the Hacienda’s closing but in 2003 this film was still a bit of a revelation to me.

Now 20 yrs on i’ve internalised the story and it was interesting to revisit this. Hard to disentangle my own nostalgia and memories of the area and the music. Is it any good? it’s kind of a mess but it also knows it and works with it. The whole thing hangs together through Coogan’s Partridge-esq performance. The first half has some great archive performances that are woven deftly into the film (your mileage may depend on your fondness for poor quality recordings of punk/post punk gigs). The second act has a bit more to it but still feels like a collection of unrelated reminiscences, which is fine for me i guess and the comic moments and characters provide a through line.

An interesting companion piece to the same team’s Tristram Shandy adaptation of a few years later (A Cock and Bull Story) both explore ideas of authorship, memory etc.