I caught “If I Should Fall from Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story” at the Roxie tonight. If you’re a fan of The Pogues, music documentaries, drunk Irishmen, and/or bad teeth, I can highly recommend this movie to you. If there are more dental cases like Shane back home in Ireland, then I also urge you to write a letter to your country’s health department urging them to immediately ship crates of toothbrushes and toothpaste to Dublin. Check out the picture of Shane on the page I linked to above and you will know what I’m talking about.
Long ago when I was a DJ at KTRU, a guy in a band I interviewed told me that they had been on tour with the Pogues and that Shane’s toes were as ugly as his teeth. Given that in the film his fingers looked almost jaundiced from cigarette smoke, I’m glad he didn’t doff his shoes for the camera.
Hygiene issues aside, this is a really great movie. While it’s really sad to see how the vast quantities of drugs and, primarily, drink, have left Shane in such an addled state, permanently incapable of literally walking a straight line, it’s hard to say that he hasn’t enjoyed his life and wouldn’t have had it any other way. Living in California, when I saw him drinking glasses of a clear liquid with lemon in the more current footage, I assumed it was water. Oh, no. That was a gin and tonic in some cases, and a gin and gin in the rest. At the end of the film, he goes for a walk with Victoria in the country with a bottle of gin to fortify him.
The classic footage from performances by The Pogues and his earlier bands were woven very nicely through interviews with Shane, his family, bandmates, and friends. The director, Sarah Share, did a great job of not trying to force the viewer into any specific conclusion about Shane’s life so far. Instead, she gave us insight we wouldn’t otherwise easily have access to regarding Shane’s background, his relationships with family and friends, and the rise and fall of The Pogues.
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