Day 20: Sid and Nancy (1986)

They didn’t give a damn. Not for you, or me, and certainly not for the whole twisted system. For 23 short months, Sid Vicious of the punk rock band “The Sex Pistols” and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen didn’t give a damn about anything but each other and the drugs that brought them closer together. This would cost Sid his career, his fame, and his money. For Nancy, it would take her life.

It all started with what eventually killed Sid- heroin. She was selling and he was buying and that’s how the relationship would always be. Nancy said Sid didn’t need the Sex Pistols and, with his irreverant behavior, he bought it. Nancy wanted to be Sid’s manager and, though he never took his career seriously after the band’s breakup, he bought it. Nancy, riddled with herion and in a deep depression, begged for Sid to kill her and, whether intentional or by accident, he bought it.

Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy” is the story of this anarcic Romeo and Juliet and takes the same aditude as the doomed couple- irreverant, loud, and brillant in its own special way. In reality, this film is not a biopic about the couple nor about Vicious at the end of his musical boom. It’s about destruction- the collape of an entire cynical culture embodied in two ”junkies” wobbling through the dirty grafettied streets of London and New York and losing who they are in a apartment at the Hotel Chelsea. While the likes of Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, Stanley Kubrick, and Allen Ginsberg stayed at their while changing the world, Sid and Nancy used it as a place to turn their back on it.

With characters so vivid and broken like Sid and Nancy, it takes very honest actors to portray them and, while Chloe Webb delieves the appropriate amount of annoyance in Nancy, it’s Gary Oldman as Sid that really stands out. With a smirk and a slouch, Oldman completely defines Vicious’s way of caring so much about not caring. He’s reckless, tempremental, and just plain nasty when the situation calls for it, but he also holds an indearing passion for the underdog, whether that be Nancy, who nobody liked, or a kid being picked on by bullies. “Who the hell are you?” the bullies ask. “I’m Sid Vicious,” the rocker responds and, in tow, the bullies are gone.

Amongst all the drugs and fury, Sid and Nancy’s relationship is perfectly personified in the film by a single scene that gives us two very intersting ways of looking at the couple’s relationship and their relationship with the world. After a boat party they are attending is stopped by the police and forced to dock, the other party goers make a break for it, running every which way on the pier while the officers tackle and arrested all they can- all those except Sid and Nancy. As the punk movement battles “the man,” Nancy calmly helps a drug addled Sid off the boat and out of the harbor by simply walking through it all as both friend and foe seem to ignore their presence.

Now several things can be said about these turn of events. Some would say that Sid and Nancy were above it all and can walk through such a mess unscathed because they’ve earned the right. Others would call the couple oblivious to the world around them and are just ignored because they no longer matter. Either way, the scene shows the disconnect the two had with everything- their friends, their fans, the world, and, in many ways, themselves.

Love them or hate them, Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy” is a vivid picture of a movement and it’s King and Queen, who were too cynical to live, but to tragic to be forgotten.

To learn more about “Sid and Nancy,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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