The Public Image Is Rotten

Director: Tabbert Fiiller ABRAMORAMA

What punk’s architect did next.

Love him or loathe him, John Lydon is never anything other than compelling on screen, and over 105 beautifully paced and visually arresting minutes, Cesar Chavez director Tabbert Fiiller takes viewers behind the facade to the complex character within.

Focusing on Lydon’s formative Finsbury Park childhood (blighted by a long, debilitating battle with meningitis that came with lasting repercussions, both physical and psychological) and the PiL saga, TPIIR downplays Lydon’s Pistols genesis, and is all the better for it.

Most of the major players tell their sides of the story, but it’s the ever-watchable, passionately intense, pathologically frank and ultimately, ludicrously likeable Mr Rotten himself who steals the show. He delivers an autobiographical master class in raw, untutored charisma.

And the soundtrack? Not a love song in sight…