Michael Winterbottom
24 Hour Party People

LA RECENSIONE

Michael Winterbottom tells us with this film the story of Tony Wilson and the historic record label that in the '80s, inspired by a Sex Pistols concert, he decides to found together with a group of his friends, Factory Records; and he tells us the story of the club that Tony decides to open in Manchester, the Hacienda, which a few years later will be described by an American magazine as the most famous club in the world, an important launch pad for emerging and little-known bands.

Together with Tony, we get to know the lives of the artists who intertwine with his and who gravitate around the Factory, the artists he discovers himself, who he pursues, and also those he loses, like the troubled Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division (a band produced by Factory) who takes his own life at the age of 23, bringing an end to the brief story of Joy Division, who will continue to produce with Factory under the name of New Order.

At the end of the film, one is so engrossed in Tony Wilson's productive life that there remains a pleasant curiosity to know him also in his non-public life, which is kept aside by the director, who intends to focus more on what Tony managed to create in those fertile years from a musical point of view, on the destinies he managed to intersect, on his extravagance apparently hidden by a certain composure, on his determined and innovative ideas.