Bronson / Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

Bronson – 2009, Nicolas Winding Refn
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – 2010, Mat Whitecross

Considering how different Michael Peterson (latterly know as Charles Bronson) and Ian Dury are, it’s surprising how similar their respective biographical films are...or maybe it isn’t?

A convention of biographical film has been recently establishing itself whereby the subject narrates and tells the story of his own life, breaking the fourth wall. Abstract and fantasy sequences are employed to help portray the character of the subject so the audience might better understand them. The feel of the time and place where the person lived are brought across using music and animation.

Most biographies still play it straight, as is fitting for the subject, like the Ian Curtis bio ‘Control’. But increasingly, when the subject is artistic/creative/notorious, accuracy has given way to presenting the subject as their persona. A direct line of biographies can be traced which have slowly become increasingly conceptual;

The Doors (1991)
Ed Wood (1994)
Chopper (2000)
24 Hour Party People (2002)
American Splendour (2003)
I’m Not There (2007)
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007)

And they’re just the ones I’ve seen. The three italicised films from early in the new millennium are the particular examples of the modern biography; take a famous persons public persona and use it to show who the real person was. We use the public image to understand the private life.

This may all seem painfully obvious, but here’s the interesting bit. Bronson and S&D&R&R share an almost identical structure and method of narration.

In ‘Bronson’, the film opens with Charles Bronson standing on a stage in a theatre. He begins to tell his life story to the both the theatre and cinema audiences. Throughout the film we come back to Charlie Bronson ‘the entertainer’ for his take on the events of his life. S&D&R&R opens in exactly the same way and uses the same method of cutting back to Ian Dury as narrator of his own story.

This may be pure coincidence, but these are two British made biographies of British men, set during roughly the same period and released within months of each other.
Does the fact that they are so similar prove an inevitability of influence? Both of these films are quite original, but they have both hit upon the same idea at the same time.
As hard as the writers and directors have tried to be different, they’ve ended up doing the same thing as the other guy. Is this because the other guy has seen the same films he has?

Anyway.
The similarities end there. The films both works well, but ‘Bronson’ works better. Bronson is funny and brutal, like the Mark Read bio ‘Chopper’ performed in a circus. The Dury film is more conventional. After all the abstract sequences it boils down to the familiar ‘he was a bit of a bastard but he loved his kids’.

Je m’appelle Charles Bronson

What bearing does this have on the upcoming Iggy Pop biography featuring...Elijah Wood?