With pale complexion and crooked features, rumpled gray hair and long stubble, with bitten off earlobes, black tooth stumps and the hissing laugh, Shane MacGowan could well be one of the quirky loners in the universe of Tim Burton. From the saddest water-blue eyes one can imagine, he looks less out into the world than into himself. So it is only logical that Julien Temple spins a fine web of looks in his film portrait of the Irish folk punk poet and frontman of the Pogues: MacGowan observes and overhears the younger versions of himself, in photos, amateur films, and television across the ages -Interviews and concert recordings, here and there he comments or contradicts, sometimes unsettled, sometimes pensive.
For almost five decades, Julien Temple has been the gifted chronicler of punk. He has captured its wild soul in the form of music videos, movies and film portraits such as “The Great Rock’n Roll Swindle” about the Sex Pistols or “Joe Strummer: The Future is unwritten”. MacGowan liked the idea of a film about his life, but he didn’t want to ask himself classic interview questions, probably also because of the many holes alcohol has left in his memory over the years. Instead, there are a few bar and table rounds with friends and companions like the actor Johnny Depp, who also produced the film, or the Irish Republican politician Gerry Adams, always with a glass of wine or the like in hand, or at least at least within reach.
From life on the farm to the London punk scene to the legendary drug and alcohol crashes
Temple does not even try to force the desolate life and uncompromisingly unpredictable existence of MacGowan into a chronology. Instead, he follows this idiosyncratic passion story in the service of Irish culture and history. Yes, there is a delicate thread that leads from the simple life on the farm in the Irish Catholic homeland to the unloved exile in England, via the rebirth in the London punk scene of the seventies to a call that extends from London to Ireland and the World echoed, right up to the legendary drug and alcohol crashes. Based on this, Temp compiles a shimmering associative image from a wealth of impressions. From the stories of the liberal parents and the wise sister Siobhan, from sound recordings from all over the world and archive material from the Irish struggles for freedom, an insane collage is created that oscillates through time and space in the logic of dream and intoxication.
Nothing is secured there, every photo can jump out of the frame, the screen, the newspaper and start moving, every thought can turn into played scenes or colorful animations, from Irish children’s books and legends, from comics in the style of Tex Avery, Robert Crumb or Disney: When there are no pictures, Temple has them created. “Anything is possible, what you can think of and create with an ally,” he said at the San Sebastian Festival, which is why his films also push the boundaries of Blow up documentary. “Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan”, as the film is called in the original, is exactly that, a treasure trove full of ideas and a few rounds at odds with the singer and song poet, who is everything at the same time, a gifted creator , a poor wreck, a melancholy poet, a savage rebel, a tender patriot who is never exhibited here, but always lovingly embraced.
Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan, USA, UK and Ireland 2020. Direction and script: Julien Temple, camera: Steve Organ, editing: Caroline Richards, animations: Dave Ashby, Theo Nunn, Johnny Halifax, Ralph Steadman, Scarlett Rickard, Martin Kingdom. Distribution: New Visions, 125 minutes