Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan
Dir: Julien Temple
Punk veteran Temple raises a glass to perpetually pissed Pogues singer.
Abawdy, bittersweet, playfully poetic portrait of former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, Crock Of Gold is the latest filth-and-fury bio-documentary from punk veteran Julien Temple. Produced by MacGowan’s long-time buddy Johnny Depp, this whisky-soaked love letter feels slightly self-indulgent in places, but Temple’s inquisitive wide-angle approach will reward even casual fans of Anglo-Irish rock’s most notorious Celtic soul brother. MacGowan’s riotous life story certainly offers plenty of fertile material, from his romanticised childhood memories of Tipperary to teenage infamy on the London punk scene, insatiable thirst for drink and drugs, brief but blazing fame as an unlikely, gargoyle-faced pop star, then decline into addiction and sickness.
It’s not the first documentary profile of MacGowan, but it is probably the most kaleidoscopic and detailed to date. Temple’s immersive maximalist style – mashing up contemporary interviews with archive material to create densely layered collages of music and dialogue, fact and folklore, literary and political subtext – is well-suited to such an excessive life. In an inspired twist, the director enlists legendary illustrator Ralph Steadman to animate some of MacGowan’s more scabrous anecdotes. Bono, Bobby Gillespie, Sinead O’Connor, Nick Cave and Depp all have cameos.
Temple is carefully, admirably nonjudgemental towards MacGowan and his catastrophic appetite for destruction. But he does include revealing glimpses of the singer’s fiery temper and prickly arrogance: losing his rag when off-screen lackeys fail to obey his demands instantly, or scornfully waving away innocuous interview questions posed by sympathetic friends. The documentary is detailed on political context, Temple diving deep into the singer’s pro-IRA republicanism here. “I always felt guilty that I didn’t lay down my life for Ireland,” he says.
The heartbreaking contrast between antique footage of MacGowan in his fiery, lusty, razor-witted prime and the hunched, speech-slurring, wheelchairbound husk of today lends this boozy cinematic ballad tragic undertones. That said, there is life-affirming warmth and humour here too, especially in the tender exchanges between MacGowan and his infinitely patient long-term partner Victoria Mary Clarke. The most glaring and depressing omission is that none of MacGowan’s former Pogues bandmates appear in recent interviews. But for all its cautionary insights into friction and addiction, Crock Of Gold still makes self-destructive ruin look highly entertaining and oddly triumphant. ■■■■■■■■■■