The Last Movie I Saw

Last night I finally got a chance to see Julien Temple's documentary on the life and legacy of Joe Strummer, The Future is Unwritten. I always liked the Clash, but never considered myself one of their die-hard fans (as it seems Temple was). I found it easier to respect their music than to always enjoy it, though there were plenty of great songs on their albums. The film does a fine job of telling the story of their leader, and demonstrating the searching quality of his career before, during, and after his time with that seminal band. Temple has more than testimony in mind here, though, as his technique includes some pretty arty montage and animation effects to augment the narration split between recordings of Strummer and the reminisces of his friends and colleagues, many of them sitting around campfires. I wasn't aware of the significance of the fires until near the end of the film, when we learn that Strummer saw something primal in such gatherings, where people gathered together to share songs and stories in an environment that was about making and maintaining social connections on a human scale and not about selling entertainment to the masses (which he clearly saw as contributing to the downfall of the Clash). By the end of his life (and recognizing that maturity and insight are the often hard won results of a lifelong process), Strummer is shown achieving a kind of secular grace, wherein music is just one of the bonds that tie people and communities together. Playing again after a long hiatus, with his band the Mescaleros, is seen as a joyous resurrection of Strummer's spirit, and if that band did not have the same defining presence in their time as the Clash, they seemed to represent a more highly cultivated, organic connection between Strummer and his audience. All of which provides Temple's film biography with a more fitting narrative climax than any rehashed nostalgia for the heyday of punk one might have expected.