Review of 24 Hour Party People (2002) by Arrianne L — 27 Aug 2008

I've been cogitating on this little gem for a while, not quite sure how best to say what I want to say about it. If you surf reviews and comments about it, you'll notice that the word "comedy" crops up quite a bit.

Granted, there are many very funny moments in the film, but overall, I'd have to place this in the tragedy camp. First and foremost, the story of the protagonist, Tony Wilson, played brilliantly by Steve Coogan, and the whole blazing birth and soaring decline of the punk rock movement, follows the arc of classic tragedy.

Wilson begins as a Manchester TV personality, fosters the Punk Rock era, enjoying incredible wealth and fame, and then ends as he began, the Manchester TV personality. Along the way there is excess -- drinking, drugs, sex -- and we are left with a man a bit more drug infused and enthused than he appears to have been at the start.

The very last line of the film is a comment on the great quality of the marijuana being smoked. Coogan, in one of many meta-moments sprinkled throughout, lays it out for us near the very beginning: It's the flight of Icarus.

An archetypal tragic trajectory, both figuratively and literally. As Coogan says, need he say more. Trust me, I am no puritan, and I've lived my share of 24-hour partying. But there is a difference in the kind of indulgence level exhibited by many of the characters here.

Either it is recreational and you walk away from it as you choose, or it becomes an ingrained lifestyle that lends itself, as it does here, to deaths along the way. And therein lies the tragedy. Forget just the punk rock scene.

Think of the music you love most. Whatever it may be. Or just think of movie stars. How many of these talented people must we lose to drugs? Will it ever end? Probably not. And there goes another Jimi Hendrix, another Janis Joplin, or another River Phoenix.

Why? For me, this story is one that is told too often time and again. It's a neverending tragedy that can't seem to be stopped. Either a drug-related or at least a drug-complicated death juggernaut.

All this being said, there are great moments of comedy, as mentioned, most happily generated as Wilson's Cambridge educational background gives rise to clever comments about classic literature and philosophy coming up against a seemingly much less educated real world around him.

Maybe we all should, as Wilson/Coogan quips, read more : ).