SLC Punk!

Firstly, let me begin with an editorial note. No, I have not simply been neglecting this endeavor in favor of that often all-consuming "real life." In truth, I have simply not seen a new movie, or even a movie new to me, since this blog's inception, a month and a half ago. That's not counting the hour of Caligula I watched before realizing that I'd rented the rated (and, consequently, pointless) version. But that is a story for another day. Let us commence with the first-ever review to grace the webspace of this fledgling blog.

Whenever I'd hear people talk about SLC Punk!, they always failed to mention the exclamation point. Obviously, this serves as a convenient metaphor for my feelings about the film. Director James Merendino took what could have been a non-story about a dead musical movement and turned it into a rather nifty bit of adrenaline that slows down just enough at the end to make you realize you care about the group of misfits around which it lays its plot. It's far more organic than the abrasive subject matter might have allowed for. Made seemingly haphazardly, the frequent use of jump-cuts alone feels like a satisfying smack in the face. How punk.

Now, I missed out on the scene SLC Punk! is so enamored of, but truth be told, I missed out on scenes in general, but perhaps that says more about me than the circumstances of my adolescence. However, that adolescence was populated by passing glimpses of more than a few kids clinging to the edifice of punk's glory years. And, for the most part, my feelings about them, or at least their clothes, were echoed by a minor character's assessment of Stevo (the main character, played with a sort of unlikeable perfection by Matthew Lillard, whose other film credits include turns as Shaggy in both Scooby Doo movies), which could simply be paraphrased as "You look like you're wearing a uniform." For most of the film's running time, we see Stevo and his mostly clueless friend Bob bumbling around, looking for meaning and acting like big old jerks while doing it. Stevo's intelligent, he did well at college, but too hung up on his ideas about rebellion to do anything with his life. At first, that's his goal, when he decides to take a year off and do as little as possible, because it'd be really punk. Eventually, THE LIFE gets back to him, and he realizes all he's accomplished in the months he "dropped out" is a lot of empty beer bottles and, as Stevo himself says in his ever-present narration, a "wave of melancholy".

In many ways, this film feels like Fight Club's little brother. It describes a society of contradictions, tears that society down, and leaves the audience in the resultant rubble to figure out some sort of answer on their own. SLC Punk!'s refusal to answer its own questions is made most clear in a glorious voice-over monologue by Stevo that essentially concludes punk's obsession with violence renders it so much bull before deciding he simply doesn't care, and will keep fighting, regardless. Eventually, when Stevo finally gives up and leaves the scene behind him, we are forced to ask ourselves if he sold out or simply grew up. I think the filmmakers had an opinion on that question, but they mercifully leave it up to interpretation.

As I said, I'll never really understand the punk rock we spend so much time with here. And I generally thought Stevo to be a bit of a prick for perhaps eighty-percent of the film. However, near the end, we see Stevo and Bob just before they discover punk, a couple of nerds playing D&D in the basement, listening to Rush. BAM, emotional involvement on my part. That three minute scene reframed my opinion on just about everything that had come before and made the remaining denouement that much sweeter. So, if you were there for the last of punk's rattling death throes chronicled here, there's obviously a lot to love here for pure nostalgia (despite the fact that the film was made thirteen years after its 1985 setting), but even a soft-spoken, reserved nerd such as myself can walk away from SLC Punk! with a lot to chew over. Anarchy, the system, rednecks, and what may seem like the most incidental part of the punk scene, the music, all get their time in the philosophical spotlight. Ultimately, though, it's the raw intensity of the experience I'll remember as much as the ideas. This one earns its exclamation point.