The Death and Resurrection Show ***
Dir: Shaun Pettigrew.
Documentary with: Killing Joke, Jaz Coleman, Jimmy Page. 150 mins. No cert
At two-and-a-half
hours, Shaun Pettigrew’s exhaustive account of Killing Joke’s four-decade
career is really a fans-only job, although it gradually loosens the cloak of
mystique drawn around this band’s shoulders. Possibly spooked by frontman Jaz
Coleman’s thousand-yard stare, Pettigrew takes his subjects’ dabbling in the
darker arts seriously indeed, devoting entire sidebars to runes and numerology.
(Less serious: guest witness Peter Hook, who shrugs off such Kerrang!-friendly
Satanism with the priceless “I’m from Salford. Why would the Devil scare me?”)
Between wobbly VHS footage of continental music shows and spinning NME
headlines, Pettigrew uncovers ample evidence of erratic personalities, yet he’s
equally attuned to fluctuations in their scowling sound: the initial DIY
flourishes, the artful lacquer of their mid-80s chartbusters, the harder edge
regained once the spotlight moved elsewhere. Throughout, Coleman remains
fascinatingly idiosyncratic, whether recording inside pyramids or going
head-to-head with Paxman; given the Joke’s longevity, you have to concede that
whoever he’s been worshipping, it’s worked.
The Death and Resurrection Show is now playing in selected cinemas.
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