The Decline of Western Civilization Part III

Name: The Decline of Western Civilization Part III
Genre: Documentary
Released: July 7, 2000
Duration: 86 min
Rating: 77

2000

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Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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7.8

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The Decline Of Western Civilization Part III

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Movie Details & Credits

Spheeris Films Inc. | Release Date: July 7, 2000

Summary: Penelope Spheeris's third installment in her documentary series examining the Los Angeles punk rock scene in the late 1990s.

Director: Penelope Spheeris

Genre(s): Documentary

Runtime: 86 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Hannah Brown

Those with the stomach to sit through Decline will be rewarded with a lively, masterful documentary. Read full review

Elizabeth Weitzman

Overwhelmingly powerful. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Unlike the first two Decline films, this one is only tangentially concerned with music. Read full review

Lisa Alspector

Spheeris, who includes her offscreen questions, evidently sympathizes with her subjects, though this doesn't stop her from pointing out their hypocrisy. Read full review

A.O. Scott

Best and most touching when it shows how willing punk is to eat its young. Read full review

Jessica Winter

Spheeris gives every indication of having gotten too close to her material, but her film's overall air of discombobulation is poignant in itself. Read full review

David Sterritt

There's lots of atmosphere and information to be gained, but stay away unless you can tolerate graphic plunges into the wildest kinds of youthful excess. Read full review

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juliankennedy23

Mar 27, 2018

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III: In the third of the Decline films, director Penelope Spheeris revisits the punk scene she illuminated in her first Decline film. Here she finds the struggle of street kids and young adults in West Hollywood trying to make it day by day, fightingThe Decline of Western Civilization Part III: In the third of the Decline films, director Penelope Spheeris revisits the punk scene she illuminated in her first Decline film. Here she finds the struggle of street kids and young adults in West Hollywood trying to make it day by day, fighting off attacks from skinheads and following the ever decreasing number of punk bands that remain in the scene.

The Good: Like her previous two films Spheeris highlights some bands and one of them is actually pretty good. Naked Aggression led by lead singer Kirsten Patches seemed like America’s answer to Chumbawamba. The band even shows their not inconsiderable classical music chops. As Todd in the Shadows would say they deserved better.

The Bad: In 1999 Rory Kennedy made a documentary about a family in Appalachia that had been beset by poverty for the last 100 years. Being the youngest daughter of Robert F Kennedy this was a topic that was close to her heart. Her film American Hollow would expose us to the real people behind the poverty and help bring in a new age of help for those folks dependent on handouts whom the American Dream had passed by.

Unfortunately for Rory, her film features the laziest bunch of yokels this side of Jerry Springer. Rory simple didn’t see it. One cannot watch her film and not think we need to cut welfare of yesterday and get these people a clue.

Spheeris doesn’t see it as well. Yes, the kids featured are broken. In reality, many of them are pretty horrible people. There is a scene where they all crash at a poor black man’s apartment. He is in a wheelchair from an auto accident, doesn’t drink and lives in a humble one bedroom. About sixty of these street hooligans pile in there as if it was a scene from Aronofsky’s Mother!. They trash the place beyond recovery and the look of pain in the man’s eyes is haunting. He just wanted a friend.

Spheeris does her interviews like the previous two films and once again most of her subjects are understandably about as deep as a puddle. She seems interested in the dirt about how they left home but leaves some obvious questions on the table. Starting with why are they dressed in fashions that went out of style before they were born.

In conclusion: Punk is long dead by the time the documentary starts. The bands, with one exception noted above, are barely garage bands and the fans are begging for a dollar to buy a pint of MD 20/20. Apparently, there are skinhead Nazis that prey on these youth but we never see one and Spheeris really drops the ball not getting one to sit down and tell their story.

On some level, it is an interesting look at a slice of life on the margins but the combination of bad people and bad music make this an unpleasant ride. One wishes for a filmmaker who could see what she really was looking at.… Expand

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