If I Should Fall from Grace
Directed by Sarah Share.
Ireland, 2001, video, color, 93 min.
Ireland, 2001, video, color, 93 min.
Sarah Share’s revealing documentary of The Pogues’s lead singer (and Ireland’s premier bad boy) Shane McGowan is a deeply felt portrait of a talent in the unmaking. Ravaged from years of alcoholism and drug abuse, McGowan rambles incoherently through most of the interviews he grants here. Share’s unflinching camera, however, frequently captures the singer in moments of rare lucidity and candor: however fleetingly, we see the fearless and passionate troubadour before his fall, a singular and fiery talent whose punk-rock-folk fusion reinvigorated Irish music for a whole new generation.