The Filth and the Fury:  documentary.  Starring Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock, Malcolm McLaren, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious.  Directed by Julien Temple.  Rated R.  Run time: 108 minutes. Now playing at the Lumiere.

Punk Rock in its prime was a formidable force: a voice of political unrest, a catalyst for social change and initially a vehicle for self-expression and untamed individuality.  Seen from our tempered perch atop the twenty-first century, it’s somewhat poignant to observe where we’ve come from musically and chronologically since those first days in 1977 when the Sex Pistols ignited the scene.  The Filth and the Fury, Julien Temple’s latest take on this chaotic splash in rock’s history since his earlier film “The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle,” takes the form of a personal conversation.  He interviews the surviving members of the Sex Pistols and compiles a seamless flow of their narrative against early archival footage of the band along with media footage and other elucidating clips.  The result is an effective collage of sound and visuals powered by the abundant energy of this earnest recollection.

John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) takes an unapologetic view of the anger and mayhem that the band provoked during their brief two-year rise before their idea was forever diluted by the media in news, fashion and subsequently ripped off by every musical comer on the scene.  He reclaims the Sex Pistols as the band’s creation and not former manager Malcolm McLaren’s masterwork as McLaren had boasted so often.  The Sex Pistols emerged as an honest reaction to what was happening in post-war England at that time: raging unemployment, the two-year garbage strike in London that had resulted in mountains of refuse banking up the perimeter of trendy King’s Road and the growing dissatisfaction with the monarchy – this noble and ubiquitous face of England.   Footage of racist tensions heating up and IRA bombs going off illuminate the fertile backdrop of this movement of righteous punk anger and uncontrollable rage.  It’s with particular irony that Lydon accounts for the word “anarchist” as the only word he could think of to attempt a rhyme with “anti-Christ” in one of their first original songs, “Anarchy in the U.K.” 

What started as the inscrutable need to speak the truth and call attention to the many evils of Western society, took hold in the restlessness of teens looking for the next big thing, the best way to be heard.  It’s interesting to note Lydon’s early musical beginnings: from his shared love of Alice Cooper with his mother and later, the Sex Pistols many turbo-charged renditions of such classic rock anthems as The Who’s “Substitute.”  Admittedly, he was only interested in a thing if he could expose its sordid underbelly and rant his gospel against the status quo, the traditional lenses of cultural perception.  When “Nevermind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols” came out, the Sex Pistols’ one and only album, it was this deconstruction through destruction that came through the loudest.  And there was a ready-made audience of disgruntled youth responding to the aesthetic’s every caprice.

The Filth and the Fury captures the punk Zeitgeist with remarkably intimate concert footage of early shows up through the band’s first and last tour in the U.S.A.  Lydon’s relationship with Sid Vicious emerges more clearly as he recounts Sid’s arrival in the band and the sudden, unannounced departure of former bassist Glen Matlock.  The footage of Sid is most memorable – he was the band’s biggest fan and then, quite unexpectedly, their bass player despite his inability to play guitar.  More often than not, he was the spirit of the Pistols embodied, on stage pogo’ing up and down, his bass usually turned off or unplugged.  Lydon’s candid reaction to Sid’s descent into hardcore heroin addiction and his vehement dislike of Nancy Spungen, Sid’s girlfriend and a groupie of the New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols, is raw and visceral.  He is at a loss to explain what happened to Sid and helpless in his grief and failure to save him.  In a moving moment, he rants against the perversity of heroin, which he says kills the soul and all creativity.

Temple has succeeded in drawing the drama of this chaotic time with stark footage, sewing together voiceovers and pieces of Sir Laurence Olivier’s Richard III alongside images of Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to recall Lydon’s early influences, the figures he imagined in creating his stage persona.  Most effective, although at first a somewhat surprising choice, is his decision to film his separate interviews with the band in silhouette, so that each person is in shadows when he is recounting this history.  The technique certainly serves to keep the attention focused on the past and keeps alive the youthfulness of our collective memory.  Resisting the morbid impulse to see how they’ve aged, Temple preserves the Pistol’s privacy, especially John Lydon’s, who in a moment of reflection over Sid’s tragic past, breaks into tears. An anti-sensationalist choice, this serves Temple’s purposes well.  The Filth and the Fury concentrates less on the musical influences of the Sex Pistols and the power they exerted on the many copycat as well as legitimate bands who followed in their stormy wake. It is a sober photo essay as intimate as an overseas phone conversation from a long-estranged friend.