The Alcohol Years (2000)
Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behavior. In Morley’s search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.
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The Worst Film Ever
A Masterpiece!
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Carol Morley of Manchester, England, with unabashed narcissism filmed people talking about her youth. She was blond, slept around, drank too much, had wild friends and big boobs and might even be charismatic. Fascinating. Movie has parental guidance warnings but actually it could let teens live the scene vicariously, from the end viewpoint, so they can do something different with their youth. Morley herself didn't have much parental guidance. Her father killed himself and wasn't around to have any input. She was a wild girl and now teaches film making. She pulled it together.There are friends from my youth that I would love to watch a multi-angled analysis of so I don't have any complaints about the concept of the film. A drunk girl isn't necessarily the person I want to see in this much depth though.
###SPOILER FOLLOWS### This woman screwed a lot and drank too much and most likely took too many drugs in the 1980's. ###END###How did I get sucked into watching this film? This is every "man I used to be so bad" story you can get at an AA meeting in any city in the world. Who funded this?I understand, you had fun and you used to be a super cool bad girl. Did we need you to tell us this in a film? Could you not have just bored people at any 12-step meeting rather than putting this on film? Yet, I got sucked into watching this on Sundance. I kept trying to guess when you would hit your bottom. Was it bedding women & men? Was it charging money for sex? Was it a marriage going bad?
I saw this film the other night on the Sundance Channel. In the first ten minutes I said to myself, "this could be interesting". In the next ten I said, "OK, you had a lot of sex as a teenager. I get it. Time to move the film forward, give it some direction, tell a story." In the next ten I said, "Wow, she really isn't going to talk about anything else, is she?" And I spent the remainder of the film wondering how a grown woman could have so little self awareness that she sincerely believes that everything she's ever done in her life is so fascinating that it deserves to be memorialized on film.The film is a series of interviews which go as follows:Man 1: You were very promiscuous, Carol. Woman 1: You had a lot of sex. Man 2: Everybody wanted to have sex with you. Woman 2: You were incredibly beautiful.And that's it. For forty-five minutes. No introspection, no deeper meaning, no plot, no humor, no characterization of anyone or anything except the filmmaker. She sincerely believes that a series of interviews with old friends telling her how much sex she had in the early 80s is, all by itself, an interesting subject for a film. Amazing.
i studied under carol morley for a semester, and she is one of the most interesting people i ever met. her documentary, the alcohol years, is an exceptional documentary. Her style inspired me, as a film student, to switch from fiction and pursue documentary filmmaking. A documentary can be about yourself, and at the same time be interesting and not look like your full of yourself. The Alcohol Years is as funny as it is touching. A definite must-see.