Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

England has long had a class system. If you are born into the lower middle class, you aren't supposed to escape it. You are expected to spend your life alternating between miserable, low-paying jobs and stints on the dole. The education and opportunities afforded the upper class aren't available for you.

The seeds of class conflict were everywhere in the slums of London. There were piles of stinking trash unclaimed by striking garbage men. There was racial strife as neighborhoods became integrated. Unemployment led to vagrancy and petty crime. It was from this environment that the Sex Pistols emerged, as an angry response to their expected lot in life.

It wasn't supposed to be this way at all. When eccentric fashion entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren agreed to manage the punk band, they were supposed to be a photographic negative of the Monkees. They were to look and act like bad boys, but only as a show, to make money.

As it turned out, the band was for real, and nobody made any money except for Virgin Records and the Fleet Street scandal rags. At the height of their notoriety, the band members had a salary of eight pounds a week.

McLaren couldn't even scrape together enough money to finish an exploitation film, Who Killed Bambi?. The aborted project featured the film debut of Sting, and had film critic Roger Ebert as a screenwriter. But McLaren couldn't pay the bills after a few days of shooting. Judging from what exists of the film, it was just as well.

It is true that bassist Sid Vicious was picked for his photogenic style, and that he could hardly play. But this can't be said for the rest of the band. Steve Jones was one of the greatest punk guitarists, and it was the energy of his playing that fed the intensity of Johnny Rotten's vocals. Other than the Clash, the Sex Pistols were the best band that came out of Britain's punk movement.

They were also the angriest, and the most willing to push the establishment to its limits. Conservative politicians panicked, afraid that the youth of London would turn into an army of unemployable, insolent Johnny Rottens. Little did they know that punk would quickly evolve into a fashion statement as much as an act of rebellion, with the rage of the Sex Pistols successively muted in their spawned imitations.

Jones and Rotten had tremendous chemistry onstage. But offstage, they were from different neighborhoods and backgrounds, and were not close. Rotten felt that the group was being exploited by McLaren. When Jones sided with the manager, Rotten left.

The group continued without Rotten for another year. But without his intellectual anger, they became the poseur band that McLaren had envisioned all along. Rotten then fronted another band, Public Image Ltd. But without the furious guitar playing of Jones, the rage that had made the Sex Pistols unique was missing.

The Filth and the Fury is a recent documentary on the band, directed by Julien Temple. Twenty years earlier, Temple had also directed The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, the group's post-mortem and McLaren's shallow interpretation of what they had stood for. Temple had been with the band from the early days, and his amateur video footage and rapport with the members provides an insider's view of the band's chaotic existence.

The Filth and the Fury has won several Best Documentary awards, from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Online Film Critics Society Awards and the Sao Paulo International Film Festival.

But the film has also been criticized, especially for Temple's reluctance to show the band members as they look today. They were interviewed in dark lighting, while Malcolm was interviewed while wearing a head-to-toe rubber costume. Apparently, Temple did not want to show yesterday's punk heroes as today's ordinary, middle-aged blokes.

But it is the content that matters more than the presentation, and the interviews are focused, well-edited and relevant.

Usually, footage from their era is onscreen anyway. This leads to a second common criticism of the film, namely, what is the point of the clips from old Olivier Shakespeare films, and of BBC talking heads and comedians?

Besides adding a surreal touch to the montage, the clips help explain the origins of Rotten's persona. Johnny Rotten saw himself as a latter-day Hunchback, as a grotesque misfit like Shakespeare's King Richard III. But then again, Steve Jones was simply looking for the glamor of being a rock star, and the girls that came along with it.

My complaints about the film are about what is missing. Their studio sessions are not discussed, nor the group's efforts after Rotten left the band. Perhaps there is too much focus on Sid Vicious, the pathetic heroin junkie who couldn't deal with the pressures of sudden fame at a young age. Since McLaren already has had his say with The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, his relative absence and Andy Warhol impersonation is not missed. (70/100)

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Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older