Kiwi filmmaker Florian Habicht’s new documentary, Pulp: a Film about Life, Death and Supermarkets, opens with the band’s front-man, Jarvis Cocker, recounting a dream he had of changing a car tyre. It’s an appropriately everyday image that begins this film about a band so interested in the ordinary. Cocker’s collaboration with Habicht was fitting too. He’s a filmmaker enthralled in the romance and surreality of the everyday, evidenced by his previous and hugely endearing film, Love Story (MIFF 2012).
Pulp follows the band as they prepare for a concert in their hometown of Sheffield, billed as their last show ever. Habicht casts his lens not only at members of Pulp, but at the city of Sheffield and its residents, who impart anecdotes and nuggets of working class wisdom. There’s Josephine, the wisp and white haired senior with an acute knowledge of Pulp lyrics; Terry, the craggy-faced newspaper vendor; and Bomar, the musician who explains why being mugged in Sheffield is better than being mugged in London – in Sheffield you’ll probably know the mugger.
Habicht explores how the unglamourous Sheffield, or ‘Sex City’ as Cocker calls it, shaped and influenced Pulp to become the household name they are. Habicht’s habit of suddenly dropping testing questions gives an intriguing insight into Cocker. At one point Habicht interrupts one of Cockers signature sardonicisms, asking, “When are you not performing? Are you performing right now?” Later, Habicht stops a half-drunk Pulp fan rushing to watch the show and asks, “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
Pulp enthusiasts will be pleased with this affectionate and quirky rock-doc, which resists deifying it’s stars and recognises fans as integral to celebrity. Habicht buffs expecting a film the calibre of Love Story will, however, be left dissatisfied with what is only a diluted sense of his filmmaking style. Conceptualised by Cocker and Habicht in collaboration after they met at the 2012 London Film Festival, this potentially progressive piece of music documentary is failed by sloppy execution (perhaps the result of a very tight six-week shooting schedule). What sprouts from the partnership of these two eccentric artists is a film that’s mostly recognisable: industry-expert talking-heads, archival footage, a record store owner recounting a time before Pulp were famous. Their song ‘This is Hardcore’ marks the end of the Sheffield concert and the climax of Pulp, but the sequence is messily shot and unimpressive compared to something like the visceral concert footage of Shane Meadows’s The Stone Roses: Made of Stone (MIFF 2013).
Habitcht plays to his own strengths at times, but perhaps not as much as he should have. The tangential interviews with residents of Sheffield and the nervous renditions of Pulp songs by two of Sheffield’s community choirs punctuate this documentary, but these charming asides are eclipsed by the more Pulp-centric elements of the film.
3/5 stars
