The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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Although I'm more or less the right age I suspect it was my upbringing along the Northern coast of Northern Ireland that limited my exposure to the music of the Pogues when they were big. For me, and I suspect for many, Shane MacGowan is better known for his heavy drinking and appearance as a messy, scabby drunken Irishman. It is to the films credit that it does not pretend away his presence as a stereotype of an Irishman that Ireland would like to forget and instead deals directly with it as part of a review of his life since the Pogues to now.

It is mostly successful in this as it presents why he was important culturally and why his music has value, drawing contributions from peers and family alike. The case is well made even though I am not particularly appreciative of his music or style. However this is well contrasted with the daily reality of MacGowan as a drunk. That he is a creative drunk is undeniable but he is clearly a drunk and scenes filmed with him sitting in his family cottage show him talking slowly through a haze so obvious that it is nearly visible to the viewer! In this state he also drops the hilarious line that he'd "always put my health first" when discussing another artist who drank himself to death – you can almost hear the commentator choke.

An interesting documentary then because it deals with the duality of the man – creative and influential on one hand, self-destructive, drunken and crude on the other.

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The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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The Great Hunger - The Life & Songs of Shane MacGowan

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