By Travis Johnson
The man born Steven Patrick Morrissey has never been one to shy away from controversy, whether it be writing scathing letters to the editors of NME as a young ‘un, fomenting weird and long-running feuds with fellow ’80s Brit-stars such as Robert Smith, and of late being a bit weird about immigration, and making some dumb comments about Hollywood abuse allegations.
The latter is making it a bit hard to cue up Meat is Murder with a clean conscience, to be honest, but long time Mozzologists are kind of used to sighing resignedly when he says or does something dumb. Indeed, controversy infects every aspect of the Morrisseyhead, extending even so far as the new Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mozza film, England is Mine.
Knowing that Morrissey is in the eye of the beholder, we dispatched two reviewers to cover the new movie by Mark Gill, which sees Dunkirk‘s Jack Lowden embody the nascent icon in all his moody glory, and they came back with very different responses. Erin Free called it “quietly compelling – if not exactly urgently paced – viewing”, while Sophia Watson describes it as “…wildly inaccurate soapy trash.”.
How perfectly, deliciously, Morrissey.
Of course, for the punter trying to decide whether to pony up some money for a movie, that’s something of a conundrum, but this film criticism thing is all largely subjective, anyway.
