In Sid and Nancy, the couple shares a kiss next to a dumpster as, in semi-slow motion, trash flutters to the ground. A baby has a green mohawk, and a taxicab floats into the distance, a four-wheeled ghost.
But any rock and roll fantasy melts down into a sobering portrait of far too much sex and a disastrous amount of drugs.
The film centers on the intense relationship between Simon John Ritchie, better known as “Sid Vicious,” bass player for British punk pioneers The Sex Pistols, and his American groupie-turned-girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
The couple is infamous because of Spungen’s mysterious and unsolved death, at just 20 years of age, in a room in New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel.
The crux of the movie isn’t whether or not Vicious murdered Nancy, though the film offers its own explanation for what happened. And it’s not a documentary about the band’s rise to fame or a commentary on the punk music scene of the late 1970s.
It’s an elegant cautionary tale, an anti-drug statement, of young and destructive beings like two black holes whose dooming gravity neither could escape.
While disappointing at the box offices, Sid and Nancy’s unorthodox cinematic style received much critical praise, and the film has been given Criterion releases.
Take a look at its creators, and you’ll understand more about why.
It was the second punk-rock subject film by the movement’s observer Alex Cox (Repo Man).
The legendary Sir Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049) provided the cinematography.
And none other than a young Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) played Vicious.
That’s a lot of talent, but is Sid and Nancy a good movie?
Let’s find out.
The Plot of Sid and Nancy:
After exploding into popularity in England, punk rockers The Sex Pistols head out for a United States tour.
To the rest of the bands’ dislike, erratic bass player Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) wants to bring his irascible girlfriend, Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), with them.
Sid and Nancy’s drug troubles and co-dependency become more of a distraction to the band, especially lead singer “Johnny Rotten” John Lydon (Andrew Schofield).
As Sid and Nancy slip deeper into drug addiction, can they find a way to crawl out?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- David Hayman as Malcolm McLaren
- Debby Bishop as Phoebe
- Xander Berkeley as Bowery Snax
- Tony London as Steve Jones
- Perry Benson as Paul Cook
- Edward Tudor-Pole as U.K. Hotelier
- Courtney Love as Gretchen
- Kathy Burke as Brenda Windzor
- Sara Sugarman as Abby National
- Graham Fletcher-Cook as Wally Hairstyle
- Sy Richardson as Methadone Case Worker
- Mark Monero as Jah Clive
- Anne Lambton as Linda
- Biff Yeager as Detective
- Michele Winstanley as Olive McBollocks
- Andy Bradford as Dick Bent
- Peter Lee-Wilson as Duke Bowman
- Gloria LeRoy as Grandma
- Milton Selzer as Grandpa
- Barbara Coles as Reporter
- Iggy Pop as Prospective Guest
The Good Things:
Underplayed, +2 Points
The film never gets heavy-handed. It doesn’t take a detached, documentary-style perspective but portrays its events and characters in a plainer light.
When it comes to Sid and Nancy’s love story, musical cues are subtle; dialogue stays away from moments of “I love yous.” Sid will tear a hole in her stocking and kiss Nancy’s feet or revel in the chain and lock she gifts him around his neck.
Fun Fact: Sid’s mother gave Oldman the real-life chain to wear in the film.
And when the movie takes us to The Sex Pistols’s concerts or practice sessions, it gets urban and raw. Those pieces unfold like a chronicle of a movement of mayhem and raw energy that had nowhere else to go, firing itself off in many indiscriminate directions.
Before and during their fame, Sex Pistols members and friends spray paint red letters across the walls or loot through discarded belongings on the sidewalk.
But there’s the balance where none of this is glorified nor downplayed, no message implying punk attitudes are what people should or should not have.
That in and of itself captures what many think is the true spirit of punk – making people think.
Deakins Delivers, +2 Points
Sir Roger Deakins and crew give us some masterful camera shots, such as the striking cinematics of Sid and Nancy getting off the boat.
As the Sex Pistols play a rowdy concert on a ship on the water, the police arrive to shut them down.
When the boat lands, a scuffle breaks out. As the cops fight against the punks, Sid and Nancy, arm-in-arm and seemingly untouchable, walk through the chaos. The camera gracefully falls back, back, and back up the dock’s ramp (I think moving on a long dolly track).
Without a word, it shows us they’re like the king and queen of this crazy world.
And then there’s the hotel fire scene.
A blaze rises after Nancy flicks a cigarette into the trash littering their hotel room. The couple just lay dreamily in bed, unalarmed, keeping warm. Things slow down and get hazy when the fire department rushes in to stop it.
It’s a provocative scene of downward spiraling.
Surreal Stuff, +2 Points
Though grounded in a narrative reality, the film floats in and out of fantasy.
There’s the surreal moment when Sid, no longer part of the Sex Pistols, performs a cover of My Way solo in a theater (this version sung by Oldman).
The lights behind him on the steps are white and vibrant. Vicious slurs his words, offering no apology for his actions.
But what makes it all the weirder is the approval of many well-dressed older patrons who toss flowers at the stage.
And as if suddenly giving up on the performance, Vicious pulls out a pistol, shooting people in the crowd, fake blood spraying (though this did happen in the real-life version.)
**Spoiler Alerts Here**
And the ending becomes entirely figurative. We’re not sure whether this is Sid in a drug dream or stepping into the afterlife.
He enjoys a last meal at a pizza joint but has to walk over heaps of debris to reach it as if it’s by the world’s end. He dances with little children to disco. Then, from nowhere, his dead love, Nancy, wearing what could be a wedding dress, rolls up in a taxicab. He joins her, and off they float into the distance.
It’s an intelligent way to end the movie. Depicting the truth, Sid overdosing to death, would have been so downbeat. This fever dream lets it fade out to a little piece of happiness – that for a time, they were together, and that’s all that mattered to them.
Here’s a Video that Includes Scenes I’ve Mentioned so Far:
1 – Sid and Nancy Get Off the Boat
2 – Oldman’s performance of “My Way”, starting at 1:41.
3 – The hotel fire scene, starting at 5:14.
4 – The kiss by the dumpster with slow-motion trash, 6:29.
Oldman and Webb’s Performances, +4 Points
Since he’s Sid Vicious, not viscous, Gary Oldman ate nothing but steamed fish and lots of melons to cut the rocker’s squirmy figure (a decision that hospitalized Oldman).
Oldman didn’t believe he portrayed Vicious very well. Still, critics hailed his performance, with some believing only his playing an unlikeable character prevented him from receiving Academy Award nominations.
It’s said his performance of Vicious is like a man-child overwhelmed with his sudden fame.
Whether he’s dragging a razor blade lightly across his chest and drawing blood (ewww) or barely cognizant on-stage, you do feel pity for this kid. He’s less angry and provocative than sad and misguided. With Oldman’s talent, Sid’s emotions are all under the surface but brought to life by his mannerisms.
Webb finds the ear-screeching pitch to craft an abrasive Nancy, always in Sid’s ear as much as she is by his side. You can tell why other characters speak out against her, yet you feel, from her tenderness to Sid, why he would feel different. That dichotomy is hard to execute.
And the two have definite chemistry, which peaks in the climactic scene leading to Nancy’s death.
Cox let the actors improvise their dialogue, and Oldman and Webb based it on as many pieces of interviews they could find to give them clues about the couple’s conflicts.
The scene is moving and challenging to watch. Sid and Nancy are at their breaking points from drugs and despondency; they argue and crash together in a moment that stops both their lives.
The Not-As-Good Things:
The Fall Without the Rise, the Peaches Without the Cream -4 Points
Though the rise of the Sex Pistols isn’t the movie’s focal point, I wish we saw more of it in the film. We see concert performances, but the band’s success is second-billing.
Sid has bits of humanity, as we know he wants to but can’t pull himself out of his addictions.
There are also a few bits of humor. Sid tries to wash dishes and clean up while donning a leopard-printed man-thong. His argument with Nancy takes his barely-covered butt out to the open street for the neighbors to laugh at.
But the film needs more levity.
It is a tricky line to walk, as the movie didn’t want to glorify drug use or a rock-star persona.
But watching so many hotel rooms strewn about with buckets of old KFC Chicken or Whopper Jr. wrappers while sweaty all-white younglings stare in drug-induced hazes is incredibly morose.
More light-heartedness to balance this out would improve the film’s watchability.
Should I Watch Sid and Nancy?
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 6 Points
Despite Alex Cox’s unique film direction, I have mixed feelings about my time with Sid and Nancy.
I found a film about two lovers falling tragically to drugs repetitive at times and flat-out hard to watch at others, though that’s harsh as that’s the game here. The movie had to balance not romanticizing its subject yet not depressing you with its reality.
But this movie has a dark beauty, and its unexpected surrealism is captivating. There are scenes the mind will hang onto, and the strong performances of Oldman and Webb hold everything together.
The picture didn’t hand out neat little dramatic arcs and nicely bring them all to sappy conclusions. The film is, almost in that punk rock spirit, content to do whatever it pleases. That’s a trick few movies can manage.
It’s certainly a film that feels authentic to Cox’s vision, and that’s why it deserves an audience.
So if you want to see a beautiful destruction, give it a go.
The Legacy of Sid and Nancy:
So what is the legacy of Sid and Nancy?
Well, I can’t draw a direct line between them, but I have a hunch that shows like VH1’s Behind the Music and other rock documentaries and movies have to have been influenced by the raw portrayal of drug dependency in this film.
Sid and Nancy have long been cult figures in their own right, especially with the couple’s dual deaths.
And this movie, too, is considered a classic cult film, a moniker of punk and counterculture. Plenty a young person has had a poster for it on their wall, no doubt.
Though director Alex Cox had a bit of a reputation before the film, his critical success with this movie brought him more recognition. And though Repo Man already tossed him into the punk scene, here was a second film all about punk culture, bringing him even closer.
The real-life Johnny Rotten, John Lydon, famously hated the movie and has claimed that it misrepresented Sid and Nancy’s relationship.
He also believes it didn’t highlight the importance of the Sex Pistols to music history, nor what the band was really all about.
He’s said in his autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, that Alex Cox did not speak to him and took his information from Joe Strummer (of The Clash). He also says the film is littered with many inaccuracies, like getting his accent wrong.
Cox has countered this in his 2008 autobiography, claiming that they had a 90-minute discussion over the script and who should play Mr. Rotten and other details about the project.
It’s Cox’s claim that they were drinking during the meeting, which explains why Lydon doesn’t remember it.
Cox also says actor Andrew Schofield, who played Johnny Rotten, also met with Lydon.
And to be clear – this is all allegedly. I certainly wasn’t there, and I am not saying who is or is not right here; I am only saying what’s been said about it.
Legendary cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins has gone on to have quite the career and is likely a figure you know.
But if you don’t, he has five BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematographer, two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, and a whopping 16 nominations total. He’s worked with Sam Mendes, the Coen Brothers, and Denis Villeneuve, for starters.
His films include The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, A Beautiful Mind, No Country for Old Men, Sicario, 1917, and even more heavy-hitters.
Young Gary Oldman’s performance, as you’d expect, stood out. No doubt this is, in part, what helped him go on to have such a varied and respected career so far.
You probably know the man. But if you don’t, Mr. Oldman has been in films such as The Dark Knight, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Leon: The Professional, and The Fifth Element.
He has an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three British Academy Film Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. He’s also one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, with his movies grossing over $11 billion worldwide.
Chloe Webb, who played Nancy, would also go on to have a long career.
As far as I can tell, she’s been active up until 2020. And she’s appeared in films like Twins, Ghostbusters II, The Newton Boys, and Practical Magic.
She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in China Beach as Laurette Barber and a Critics’ Choice Television Award for her role as Monica Gallagher on Shameless.
She’s also appeared on Remington Steele, Two and a Half Men, and CSI, among others.
Well, that’s all I got. Thank you so much for reading.
And for more Alex Cox, check out my review of his highly-acclaimed Repo Man.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
