Filth Review - OR - F**kbuggery

Plot

Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) has his eyes set on promotion to detective inspector. Thing is, he’s a corrupt, drug-taking, binge-drinking, sociopath, as likely to ruin a passing child’s day as he is to catch a criminal. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get his promotion, but after a disastrous divorce his already fragile mind is set to go into overdrive.

Pictured: Not giving a f**k.

Review

British cinema is famous for that most nebulous of filmy things: realism.  Ken Loach, Shane Meadows, Paddy Considine; the British industry’s obsession with the gritty depressing nature of reality is grim in its omnipresence. If it doesn’t involve powdered dandies from back in the day then it’s likely set in some form of working class misery. Then there’s hyperrealism, or surrealism...or barmy, blow-your-brains-against-the-wall insanity in the vein of Trainspotting. It’s realistic but, y’know…there may be toilet spelunking.

Filth is resolutely in the Trainspottingcamp of British cinema. And it’s not surprising, mad Scotsman Irvine Welsh authored them both.

First things first: Filth is gloriously, relentlessly depraved. It’s the sort of film that’s going to upset a lot of people. And it couldn’t give a smaller f**k about it. So far as attitudes go, you’ll either find it utterly addictive or indescribably disgusting. Go watch Trainspottingfirst – maybe by way of Event Horizon– to get a taste.

As a narrative exercise, Filth is unremarkable. It's a simple enough story with a limited arc: nutter wants a promotion but his inherent psychotic frailty gets in the way. And while it by and large tells its story with a disturbing commitment to its own brainblasting madness, there are definite slumps in pace on occasion, where there seems to be a conflict between pushing things along and squeezing in some extra gooey disturbance.

Gotta love a smudge of symbolism.

Having said that however, it really doesn't matter thanks to the strength of McAvoy's performance. Bruce is disgusting. He's a monster, a brute, a drug-addict, an alcoholic, a rampant masturbator, a potential rapist and an all round nasty manipulative bastard. He's utterly reprehensible, broken beyond comprehension. And McAvoy plays it all with genuinely unsettling skill.

While ostensibly an unrepentant beastman, there's a depth of character to Bruce that’s difficult to watch in all the right ways. He’s a character who in less capable hands could quite easily be labeled a felony. But McAvoy pitches it perfectly, swinging erratically from total schizophrenic psychosis to devastatingly dramatic clusterfuck of disturbance in a heartbeat. If there was a little less dinkus-tugging and underage-sex-baiting the role would surely be fighting for prizes.

You never really like Bruce - and to do so would dig up some serious questions about your emotional stability and general societal understanding of the world – but that doesn’t stop you rooting for him. Yeah, he’s plotting to single-handedly destroy his and everyone else’s lives for little more reason than greed, but… you go, sir. In that sense, Bruce is the quintessential anti-hero, though there’s far too little hero in him so perhaps ‘anti-villain’ would be better suited here.

2013 has been a year of change for McAvoy and Bruce gives him the chance to sever any and all remaining ties to the romantic dreamboat roles that characterised his early career. So far this year we’ve had Welcome to the Punch and Trance, both of which put McAvoy in growly action mode. But in Filth the Scotsman truly shines; an endearingly anarchic, majestically messed-up skid mark on society.

A face only a mother - and all women and (honest) men - could love.

McAvoy as Bruce is the nucleus around which Filthrevolves, its impossible to think or comment on any other aspect of the film without first passing through that central globule that keeps everything ticking. Fortunately however, the supporting cast sports some truly remarkable turns without which Filth would feel considerably less lively. Not to mention less filthy. Chiefly, Eddie Marsan is outstanding as the moronic Bladesey, another character almost bereft of redeemable qualities – his niceness is derived from a lack of sense more than anything else – but one easily (guiltlessly) likeable. You want him to do well, support the underdog and all that…but you also kinda want Bruce to keeping f*****g with him for a laugh. It’s that kind of moral knife-edge that Filth cultivates so well.

It’s not all perfect character-wise. The villain of the piece - provided you don’t ascribe to the belief that it’s Bruce’s own psyche - is terribly handled. The film kicks off with a nasty murder of a Japanese school-kid, and it can’t decide if the perpetrators are a throwaway gag, a means to an end, or a legitimate plot point. It makes for a shaky hand that serves only to destabilize a film that otherwise finds a logical sense of cohesion and reality amongst the cesspit of anarchic deprivation it calls a home. Until the end that is, which just kind of happens. There's a decent twist granted, but the aforementioned flat antagonists and general eclectic pacing make for a sloppy conclusion to a manically entertaining film.

Ultimately, Filth’s humour is blacker than the dead of night, it’s characters are monstrous, it’s moral underpinnings beyond questionable. As a technical product it’s perplexing, cutting jarringly from scene-to-scene, flashback to dream-sequence to hallucination. It’s score is discomforting in its familiarity (outside of one repeated motif almost everything is classic pop) and Jim Broadbent’s Gilliam-esque Dr. Rossi is a thing of the most hellish of nightmares. It is, in essence, a trip. A great big mind-bending trip that isn’t likely to better anybody any time soon.

And it is glorious.

Oh yeah...NSFW, guys.

Verdict

Racist, sexist, homophobic and prejudiced against just about everything and everyone: Filth shocks not for shock’s sake, but because that’s what is. Don’t go calling it a self-righteous mirror held up to the face of society; it’s a depraved exploration of one disturbingly real man’s descent into madness.

4/5

For a taste of insanity:

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