The Libertines - There Are No Innocent Bystanders (Film Review)
Monday, 09 May 2011
Written by Victoria O'Hagan
There was much anticipation surrounding the upcoming Libertines film ‘There Are No Innocent Bystanders’ which premiered at the opening gala of the East End film festival. For members of a certain generation, The Libertines were the dirty-faced champions of national pride, and so the fact that this film premiered in the week of the royal wedding, as London stood draped beneath a thousand Union Jacks, seemed sweetly ironic.
The film, sold as a conclusive end to the band’s story, details the 2010 reunion gigs at the Forum, Reading and Leeds. Attended by die-hard Libertines fans and members of the band themselves (all except Doherty, who reportedly avoided the event due to its emotional content) the expectations of the crowd queuing outside the Troxy in East London were insurmountably high.
Once Libertines drummer Gary Powell had taken to the stage to deliver a sweet and witty speech in his transatlantic drawl, the lights went down and the film began with a suitably evocative instrumental. Roger Sargent, the Libertines photographer and director of 'There Are No Innocent Bystanders', uses his impressive collection of photographs to illustrate the film without allowing the images to interrupt the fluidity of the storytelling. The film itself is a mixture of interviews, backstage footage, bursts of photographs and live footage. A few chunks of screen time follow Barat as he takes us on a Libertines Guided Tour of London, showing us the East London flat and the brothel he once shared with Doherty, before taking a stroll through Up The Bracket Alley where countless fans have scrawled Libertines lyrics onto the bricks.
For fans already well-versed in the history of the band this information is largely superficial, and most fans are looking to this film to provide some new insight. Disappointingly, the film offers little that we do not already know.
The Libertines are a band shrouded in their own mythology, but 'There Are No Innocent Bystanders' does little to clarify things. Carl Barat bears the brunt of some lengthy interviewing, but is too introspective and self-aware to ever truly lose himself in the subject matter, and Doherty, the more verbally dexterous of the two, is given tragically little screen time in which to express himself. The film lacks free dialogue between the band members, relying instead upon individual recollections and opinions. This would be fine of course, except that every other approach to telling the Libertines ‘story’ has been done in precisely the same way. The interviews become a subtle blame-game, raking over old scars (quite literally, in Doherty’s case) and lamenting over the same issues. It seems that whilst trying to recreate the energy and chemistry that made Doherty and Barat’s relationship so engaging, Sargent has inadvertently evoked a delicate sense of bitterness that prevents the film from ever achieving its aim of nostalgia, and closure.
What saves the film from being an altogether rather depressing affair is the untouchable live footage from The Forum, and Reading Festival. The music that the Libertines make together, in all its ramshackle glory, is so much more harmonious than their personal relationships with one another. Indeed, the closest this film brings us to free and open dialogue between Barat and Doherty is the footage of them on stage, their palpable sexual chemistry and emotional investment in the lyrics drawing them together across a microphone, their brows knitted in unison.
Unfortunately, this film seems to have missed its mark. Newcomers to the band will be confused by its content, and would struggle to identify what made this band so important, and vital; whilst those that are well-versed in Libertines folklore are already too clued-up to gleam any further insight. Fans will still clamour to see it, and Sargent should be proud that he attempted to tell a story that is so important to so many people. But there is more magic in gathering together Sargent’s beautiful photographs, sticking on a Libertines record, and allowing the story to simply tell itself.
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Once Libertines drummer Gary Powell had taken to the stage to deliver a sweet and witty speech in his transatlantic drawl, the lights went down and the film began with a suitably evocative instrumental. Roger Sargent, the Libertines photographer and director of 'There Are No Innocent Bystanders', uses his impressive collection of photographs to illustrate the film without allowing the images to interrupt the fluidity of the storytelling. The film itself is a mixture of interviews, backstage footage, bursts of photographs and live footage. A few chunks of screen time follow Barat as he takes us on a Libertines Guided Tour of London, showing us the East London flat and the brothel he once shared with Doherty, before taking a stroll through Up The Bracket Alley where countless fans have scrawled Libertines lyrics onto the bricks.
