Filth

One of the worst people I ever knew was an old boss. From his first day, he targeted me and the only other male staff member. "Women just work better," he proudly declared, and it didn't take very long to become clear that he was trying to get rid of us. I had a pretty strong relationship with some of my female co-workers, and he saw that as a threat. He spent the next year playing mind games with all of us, to lengths that even in retrospect seem outrageous. Eventually, I screwed up and he jumped at the opportunity to get rid of me. About a month later, he was fired. My sudden disappearance from the roster caused management to come down and do some investigating. Turns out he'd been stealing money and fudging the numbers. Badly. In the months that followed, little bits and pieces of information started to leak out about what sort of a person he really was. We used to go into the back room of a night time to find things in different places, and often the office would smell like it had been lived in, which caused us to joke that maybe he was living there. He was; the share house he was staying in kicked him out for playing the same mind games he did with us. He also spent a week bragging about having a hot new car, which we all knew was a lie. When the owner came down for a meeting, he suggested this guy go and get some food with his flash ride. We could see him sprinting away from the back room to the pizza shop. He was so full of bravado and confidence that you would almost believe him to be as powerful and persuasive as he portrayed, if it weren't for always getting a glimpse at the other side of the coin. My point is, I've often wondered what motivates a person like that; what sort of trauma or event triggered them into becoming the person that they are. Filth has a go at answering such a pondering. Its conclusion? Nothing that hasn't happened to any other miserable cunt.

Within the first ten minutes of Filth, Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) manages to be racist, misogynistic and homophobic on multiple occasions, sometimes within the same sentence. Even more impressive, he manages to simultaneously exude impossible charm and charisma. He's a detective working in Edinburgh, and word around the office is a promotion is coming up. He sees this as a great opportunity to keep his wife happy, and begins planning and executing schemes to ensure his co-workers couldn't possibly be considered, something he refers to as "The Games." For instance, his closest friend at the cop shop, the mild-mannered Bladesey (Eddie Marsan), finds his patience and masculinity put to the test as his wife continues to be harassed with very sexual prank phone calls that she herself is engaging in too. Guess who's making them? It's all part of "The Games", including Bruce's subsequent framing of Bladesey for the calls. On top of all this, he's working on solving the murder of a young Japanese girl, a case that gets all the more difficult as his drug abuse, bipolar disorder and general mental stability begin to steadily and increasingly spiral out of control. Does he eventually learn from his all-encompassing destructive tendencies, acknowledge his rampant, glorifying dishonesty and make, if not completely, then at least the first steps towards being a somewhat decent human being? Nope, he hangs himself. Credits.

Seeing Filth in a sold-out theatre was an interesting experience, because I was able to witness the trick it pulls on its audience on a large scale. Initially, as I've already mentioned, Bruce Robertson is a disgusting human being, but damn it all if he isn't smooth about it. The audience (myself included) laughed uproariously as he freely and wittily disparaged anyone who had the misfortune of being in his proximity and not a straight white male. At the office Christmas party, he sees his co-worker, Ray Lennox (Jamie Bell) finally getting in close with his crush. Utilising his prior knowledge that Ray's not the most well-endowed fellow, he suggests a party game in which they all photocopy their assets in private and get the female staff to guess which belongs to whom. Ensuring that he doesn't give up a chance to glorify himself while humiliating someone else, he goes ahead and hits the enlarge button on his own not-so-impressive hang dang. At another point in the film, he's masturbating to porn on his flat-screen, until the camera pulls out and he realises the woman is with a black man, prompting him to shout "FUCK OFF" and change the channel to a children's television show. This gets him going again, and he gives Bladesey's wife a ring to help him rub one out. As the film's title suggests, this is low-down and disgusting, but it's presented with an energy and wit that somehow makes it accessible. Because right now, all we're seeing is this man with a winning grin who can do anything to anyone, and he's letting us in on the joke. It's funny, until it isn't. Later in the film, Bruce is watching home movies of his wife and child. The weight of his emotions begin to overwhelm and he breaks down, sobbing. But rather than allow himself to have a genuine moment of humanity, he desperately fumbles for the phone so he can call Bladesey's wife again. It's the same situation, with similar lines and the same cheeky smile, but now we've seen the man behind the curtain. As Bruce comes, with tears, snot and spit streaming down his face, a voice in his ear begging him to fuck her and a TV displaying a still frame of his once-happy wife in their kitchen, it's not so funny anymore.

There's a very long segment in Filth where Bruce really starts circling the drain. He erratically shifts from one encounter to the next, inhaling more drugs and medication wherever possible and rapidly becoming more and more psychologically unhinged. He regularly has hallucinatory flashes where the people in front of him resemble the animal he most closely identifies them as (it's a pig when he's looking in the mirror). He also regularly has hallucinatory sessions with his psychiatrist, who either advises him to consume more drugs or warns him about the dangers of talking tapeworms. At one point, Bruce wakes up by vomiting all over himself in his car. He stumbles to work and is advised that he's being replaced on the murder case by his female co-worker, Amanda Drummond (Imogen Poots). As she leaves the office, he drunkenly stumbles after her, shouting that all she's done is fuck her way to the top. Amanda has the gall to turn that back around on him, and for a flash-second he advances on her, jaw clenched and fists balled. She stands tall, and invites him to hit her, if that's what he needs to do to feel any less insignificant. Bruce stops, and the weight of everything hits him again. "Oh...oh, love, I'm so sorry...I wasn't going to hit you...I would never...I wasn't going to hit you..." He collapses on the stairs and starts crying. Amanda sits with him and speaks the most eloquent summary of his condition ("You need to sort your shit out, Bruce."). And it's here that he reveals the lies he's been telling about his supposedly picturesque family life. When he tells his co-workers that they're off seeing the grandparents for the weekend, it's false. The truth is, they left him. And he's so fucked up that he can't even remember why. "I used to be a good person," he whispers, and you feel that, maybe, he might come around. But then Amanda touches his shoulder, and he has a flash that makes him see a green-faced witch in front of him. He reverts to his violent and vitriolic self, abusing Amanda until she leaves and running out the front door to destroy the first life he can get a hold of. Throughout the film, scenes are book-ended with his wife dressed in a burlesque costume spouting aggrandising parables regarding her husband. It turns out that was Bruce dressing as her to, as he put it, "keep her close." Dressing as his wife isn't the concerning part, it's that when he puts on the dress he becomes her. It's getting easier and easier to see why she got the fuck out of dodge.

At one point in Filth, Bruce and Bladesey are sitting in a gay bar, Bruce discussing how much homosexuality disgusts him and Bladesey saying that he doesn't disagree with their lifestyle, but he knows for sure and certain it's not for him. Bruce nods as he slips four ecstasy tablets into Bladesey's drink, and seconds later he's in between two men with Christmas lights around his neck, kissing them and dancing to European house music. You laugh, as you're supposed to, and then in a flash Bruce is pushing Bladesey into their hotel room, desperately trying to talk him down from his freak out. Bladesey is thrashing on the bed in a crazed panic as Bruce runs his hands through his hair and tries to remain calm. "You're fucking up my trip, man!" he shouts before following that up with, "Fuck it, you're on your own." He retreats to the bathroom, where he backs up against the door, frantically chewing his fingernails and shivering. Eventually, he stumbles out to the street, where he finds a prostitute that looks just like the projection of his wife that he dresses up as. He claws desperately at her, crying, before she fights him off, he realises his mistake and carries on, eventually collapsing in a puddle of bodily fluids. That's Filth in a nutshell. You don't get to just see the drug addict in that ten-minute window where they're fun to be around. You're stuck with him, for the whole sordid journey. He's had some bad things happen to him. On top of losing his family, he was also negligently responsible for the death of his brother when he was a child and has failed to save a couple of citizens in his line of work. But beneath all of the personal tragedies, all of the sympathy, all of the bravado, all of the handsome charm, what is there? Nothing but a pathetic shell of a man who has to ruin the lives of everyone around him so that he can avoid even a single second of acknowledging his own failures. Perhaps it's good that he kills himself. He records a video for Bladesey apologising for the person that he is and offering words of encouragement to him and his marital troubles. As Bruce is about to tip the chair over, there's a knock on the door. It's a woman and child the father of which Bruce tried and failed to resuscitate earlier in the film. They're a shot, a real shot, at him achieving some warped sense of redemption, at returning to the good person he once was. But for once, Bruce is honest with himself and, knowing that in the end he'd just ruin their lives too, he looks straight in the camera, says "Same rules apply", grins and lets himself go. His first act of human compassion is removing himself from the equation. Maybe the saddest thing about Filth is that I didn't learn anything new about people like my old boss. I walked in thinking, "People like this are fucking pathetic", the movie replied with, "Yep. They sure are", and we went our separate ways. But in the end, I appreciate the honesty. And I really appreciate getting to see Professor X in fishnets.