Manchester United

Tony Wilson, a young Cambridge-educated Manchester TV personality, was among the 42 people in the city’s Lesser Free Trade Hall for a June 4, 1976, performance of the already notorious Sex Pistols. It was an electrifying experience for the prescient Wilson, who featured the band on his weekly program and soon was presenting other bands at a local club.

Not long after, Wilson and his friend Alan Erasmus (Lennie James) and band manager Rob Gretton (Paddy Considine) formed Factory Records, a collective enterprise, and later the Hacienda nightclub. Between 1976 and 1992, when the Hacienda finally closed, Wilson et al. would transform rock music and put Manchester on the pop culture map.

In “24 Hour Party People,” a boldly innovative account of Wilson and Manchester rock, we meet Wilson (Steve Coogan) while on a TV assignment that required him to try to hang-glide. The stunt flops, literally, and Wilson informs the audience directly that we can take the incident as symbolic of what the future holds for him.

As conceived by Coogan, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce and director Michael Winterbottom, with an assist from the real Wilson, Tony Wilson is a flat-out great screen character. Coogan’s Wilson is very tall, slim with a long aristocratic nose, and he frequently combines traditional three-piece suits with the long-hair style of the ‘70s. He is an imposing figure, given to literary quotations and grandiose allusions. Wilson’s ego knows no limits, but neither does his passion, and his zeal comes across as astoundingly free from greed.

In the film, Wilson progresses from the callow to the glib, but he is never unlikable. He never runs out of ideas, and his gift of gab never fails him.

In one of numerous direct addresses to the camera, he insists he is but a minor character and that the music is the story. Not here. Coogan’s rendering of Wilson on a larger-than-life scale is endearing and quixotic. Coogan invests Wilson with a capacity for self-awareness, even at his most foolish.

The Manchester sound, vibrant and intoxicating and varied over the years as it flourishes in the many bands Wilson nurtures, is essentially aural wallpaper, providing a lively background for a full-bodied portrait of a man who always thought and dreamed big.

Among those 42 people in the audience for the Sex Pistols’ Manchester performance were the Stiff Kittens, soon to become Factory Records’ first stars as Joy Division, fronted by Ian Curtis (Sean Harris), a singer-composer of such unrelieved intensity that he hung himself in 1980. Resigned to the conventional wisdom that no group can survive the loss of its lead singer, Wilson is blown away by Joy Division’s rebirth as New Order.

In 1982, Wilson opened the huge Hacienda, slow to catch on but finally as popular as Studio 54. It was there that Wilson discovered Happy Mondays and signed them up to record with gifted, eccentric, hard-living Martin Hannett (Andy Serkis) at the controls. Ian Curtis had never heard of Yeats, regarded by Wilson as the greatest poet since Dante. But to Wilson, the Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder (Danny Cunningham) is Yeats’ equal. An epic-scale drug abuser and all-around rowdy, Ryder probably hadn’t heard of Yeats either, but for all of their innovative dance music, the Happy Mondays’ profligate, irresponsible ways would contribute mightily to Factory Records’ downfall. The Hacienda would close in 1992, undermined by patrons who favored ecstasy over profitable booze. Harris, Serkis and Cunningham are among at least a dozen key players lending staunch, colorful support.

In itself, “24 Hour Party People” is amazing, rich in authentic period atmosphere and detail, an ever-changing cyclorama of a movie that contains and frames Wilson, who never is allowed to overwhelm it. Shot with maximum flexibility in digital format by the formidable Robby Muller, illustrious collaborator of Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Lars von Trier, “24 Hour Party People” bursts with nervous energy. Yet Muller also pulls back for glorious aerial shots of Manchester at night and a clutch of stunning wide-angle shots. Since Wilson held on to his newscaster day job, his career in music is amusingly punctuated by his TV human interest features--one actually has him learning how to herd sheep.

Having lost his musical empire, Wilson commiserates with a few colleagues at night on a rooftop, where, in a feeling-no-pain state, he has a vision of God, who advises him to release a package of Factory’s biggest hits. He is asked by his pals what God looks like. “He looked like myself,” he replies matter-of-factly, reminding them that after all, “God made man in his image.” No man with such self-regard can know true defeat.

MPAA rating: R, for strong language, drug use and sexuality. Times guidelines: some profanity, drug use.

‘24 Hour Party People’

Steve Coogan...Tony Wilson

Paddy Considine...Rob

Danny Cunningham...Shaun

Sean Harris...Ian

Shirley Henderson...Lindsay

Lennie James...Alan

Andy Serkis...Martin

John Simm...Bernard

United Artists presents, in association with the Film Consortium, the Film Council and Film Four, a Revolution Films production, in association with Baby Cow Films, released by MGM. Director Michael Winterbottom. Producer Andrew Eaton. Executive producers Henry Normal. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Cinematographer Robby Muller. Editor Trevor Waite. Costume designers Natalie Ward & Stephen Noble. Music supervisor Liz Gallacher. Production designer Mark Tildesley. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

In limited release.