The Alcohol Years

i studied under carol morley for a semester, and she is one of the most interesting people i ever met. her documentary, the alcohol years, is an exceptional documentary. Her style inspired me, as a film student, to switch from fiction and pursue documentary filmmaking. A documentary can be about yourself, and at the same time be interesting and not look like your full of yourself. The Alcohol Years is as funny as it is touching. A definite must-see.

This is the story of Carol Morley's wild and wanton years back in the 1980's. The film is a series of talking heads of the people Carol slept and partied with back on the 1980's while she was in a band inter-cut with old film footage and new film footage. Carol doesn't appear on film and the film is structured as if the interviewees are talking to Carol and the inter-cut footage is memory.

I think.

Then again I really don't care. There is only so much that I can hear about some one's sex life over and over again before I stop caring. Usually about two minutes, this is 50 odd minutes more than that. Actually to be honest the problem is not that I don't want to hear about her sex life, I would, if it was interesting, but its not, its the same basic tale repeated over and over again. There is talk about Carol's partying but mostly people seem to focus on the sex, or so it seemed to me.

I watched this hoping that I would find something to latch onto, but I couldn't. I don't know why this would interest anyone other that the director who may or may not have made this in an effort to remember how many people she actually slept with. I have no idea what sort of hubris would make someone think that anyone other than those involved with her would want to see this film.

2 out of 10 for the five minutes that the film is interesting.

an interesting, if narcissistic, examination of identity. Carol Morley - sister of journalist and TV pundit Paul Morley - returns to her teenage stomping ground in Manchester, putting an advert in the local paper for people who remember her. And so we're greeted with a series of talking heads, some famous (Tony Wilson, Vini Reilly) but most unknown. They paint a picture of the years that the documentary maker lost to alcohol and sex. In fact, although she was an artist and in a band, most of the interviewees seem to remember her for her sexual exploits. We never get more than a glimpse of Morley herself but, as the cast of friends and acquaintances talk into the camera, we're forced to become her. It's often intensely personal and uncomfortable, and sometime voyeuristic to the point that you wonder about Morley's motives. But it's nonetheless an interesting glimpse of Manchester at a time when the Hacienda was empty and the Happy Mondays were still practicing in a garage.

This is, without a doubt, the most egotistical film I have ever seen. Carol Morley takes a camera and interviews a bunch of people who knew her when she was of her head all the time. Some of these people are famous, presumably roped in to give this thing a selling point. They all comment on how messed up she was , then we see some POV footage while someone drones on the voice-over. None of this is the least bit interesting, unless you are Carol Morley or one of her mates, and then only maybe.

It's kind of like a home video of your aunties wedding but infinitely more depressing and boring.

Several years later it ends, and we know precisely eff all about the subject. But then again why should we care? Who the bleedin Christ is Carol Morley anyway, why would she assume that people would be interested in her?

Just like sitting next to a total drunk on the bus home as he tells you his life story and how it all went wrong...

I saw this film the other night on the Sundance Channel. In the first ten minutes I said to myself, "this could be interesting". In the next ten I said, "OK, you had a lot of sex as a teenager. I get it. Time to move the film forward, give it some direction, tell a story." In the next ten I said, "Wow, she really isn't going to talk about anything else, is she?" And I spent the remainder of the film wondering how a grown woman could have so little self awareness that she sincerely believes that everything she's ever done in her life is so fascinating that it deserves to be memorialized on film.

The film is a series of interviews which go as follows:

Man 1: You were very promiscuous, Carol. Woman 1: You had a lot of sex. Man 2: Everybody wanted to have sex with you. Woman 2: You were incredibly beautiful.

And that's it. For forty-five minutes. No introspection, no deeper meaning, no plot, no humor, no characterization of anyone or anything except the filmmaker. She sincerely believes that a series of interviews with old friends telling her how much sex she had in the early 80s is, all by itself, an interesting subject for a film. Amazing.