Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 29/1/2015)

Following the Christmas vacation in the winter of 1943-44, 12 year-old Gaspard Manesse returns to his Carmelite boarding school in Fontainbleau, to the south of Paris. His older brother, Stanislas Carré de Malberg, delights in giving some Germans false directions at the railway station. But, while he poses as a tough nut, Manesse is still tied to mother Francine Racette's apron strings and sometimes wets the bed during bouts of homesickness. His boredom with lessons is relieved. however, when headmaster Philippe Morier-Genoud brings three new pupils to his classroom and Manesse becomes increasingly intrigued by Raphaël Fejtö, whose talent for maths and the piano belie the fact that he is a socially awkward loner.

He discovers the secret of Fejtö's aloofness when he is woken in the night and overhears him praying in Hebrew. Searching through his belongings, Manesse discovers that Fejtö is Jewish and is one of several boys being hidden by Morier-Genoud from the Nazi patrols that rove the town. Aware that any betrayal would place the elderly priest in danger, Manesse keeps his council. But he asks Carré de Malberg why Jews are so unpopular and is informed that they killed Jesus Christ and refuse to eat pork.

Despite deciding to give Fejtöa a wide berth, Manesse forges a bond with him when they get lost during a treasure hunt in the countryside surrounding the school. As darkness falls, they huddle together in the woods when approached by a wild boar and are even more terrified when they are spotted by some German soldiers. However, they reassure the boys that they are Bavarian Catholics and mean them no harm. Indeed, they wrap them in a blanket before escorting them back to the school.

Some days later, Racette comes for parents' day and she readily agrees when Manesse asks if Fejtö can accompany them to a posh restaurant for lunch. She is embarrassed when a handsome Wehrmacht officer makes eye contact, but is relieved when he steps in to restore order after some local militiamen start harassing a distinguished Jewish gentleman and Carré de Malbarg accuses them of being quislings. As calm descends, Carré de Malbarg asks Racette if his factory-owning father is still supporting Marshall Pétain and she whispers that loyalties are waning. She also urges Manesse to keep his voice down when he asks if they are Jewish. However, as she reassures the boys that she has nothing personal against Jews as a race, she wouldn't object if someone decided to hang former socialist prime minister Léon Blum.

Back at school, Manesse reflects upon Fejtö's behaviour at the restaurant and realises how frightening it must be both to be hated and to have to play a role in order to survive. He vows to be a good friend to him and is pleased when music teacher Irène Jacob is moved by his rendition of Schubert. They join in a stilt game in the playground and laugh together during a screening of Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (1917). In private, they giggle over smutty postcards and a copy of the Arabian Nights. But they take a more serious interest in the flags denoting the Allied progress on a map being maintained by a history teacher who had served in the trenches. Moreover, they realise that the air raid that threatens their safety is also a sign of hope and they stay out of the shelter to play an exuberant tune on the piano.

However, tensions rise when kitchen assistant François Négret is caught stealing food to sell on the black market and he accuses Manesse and Carré de Malbarg of being among his accomplices. Left with little option, Morier-Genoud fires Négret, but reluctantly takes no action against the students he has identified, for fear of upsetting their wealthy parents. But Négret refuses to go quietly and his information prompts the Gestapo to raid the school one freezing January morning. Desperate to reassure his friend, Manesse shoots Fejtö a glance that is instantly spotted and the boy is led away with his two companions. As he watches them being led away, Manesse raises a hand in guilty greeting as Fejtö looks back. He also notices the envious, orphaned Négret looking on with quiet satisfaction and he tells Manesse to grow up and face the cold reality of conflict.

The officer in charge summons the students to the playground and proceeds to denounce all French people for being weak and ill-disciplined. He marches Morier-Genoud towards the waiting transport. But the priest turns to reassure his charges by saying: `Au revoir, les enfants! À bientôt!' As the film ends on a close-up of Manesse, Malle concedes in voiceover that he has never forgotten a single second of that morning and reports solemnly that the three Jewish boys perished in Auschwitz and the priest in Mauthausen. He concludes by stating that he will remember them until the day he dies.

The actual boys taken from the Jesuit boarding school of Sainte-Thérèse de l'Enfant Jesus in Avon on 3 February 1944 were Jacques Halpern, Hans-Helmut Michel and Maurice Schlosser and Malle's attempt to pay tribute to them by revealing the `burning secret memory' he had harboured for four decades says much about his courage as a film-maker and his decency as a human being. It also speaks volumes that he maintains a balance between his characters, so that schoolboys and collaborators alike are seen taunting Jews, while a soldier and a priest are shown defending them. Indeed, similar tensions consistently underpin the episodic storyline, which is punctuated with acts of searching and concealment, with the Gestapo's pursuit of Jews, freedom fighters and criminals contrasting with the boys' bid to find themselves in their rivalries, games and perusal of erotica.

Renato Berta's muted cinematography helps establish the sense of creeping oppression and deepening foreboding that pervades Manesse's stumbling passage towards understanding. But it's Malle's handling of

the debuting Manesse and Fejto that keeps their fate from becoming melodramatic, as - like Brigitte Fossey and Georges Poujouly in René Clément's even more remarkable study of the impact of war on young minds, Jeux Interdit (1951) - they're never allowed fully to appreciate the seriousness of their situation until it's too late.

The passing references to the declining health of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez root Mariana Rondón's Pelo Malo (aka Bad Hair) in some form of historical context. Following on from At Midnight and a Half (1999), which she co-directed with Marité Ugas, and Postcards From Leningrad (2007), Rondón directs with a sure sense of place and coaxes excellent performances from a cast that was encouraged to improvise around a script it never got to see. But, for all its wistful charm, there is real potency in a domestic drama that lays bare the social and economic problems facing the citizens of Caracas, whose poverty only reinforces the racial and gender prejudices that confirm the failure of Bolivarian Marxism to overhaul the legacy of colonialism and underdevelopment.

Having embarrassed mother Samantha Castillo by taking a bath in the house she is cleaning, nine year-old Samuel Lange Zambrano joins best friend María Emilia Sulbarán to watch their neighbours through the windows of their flats in a sprawling tenement estate. He scarcely notices his toddler brother and is oblivious to the fact that his mother has been facing an uphill struggle since his father died and she lost her job as a security guard for an unnamed infraction. He is aware, however, that she dislikes the amount of time he spends looking in the mirror at the frizzy hair he wishes so desperately was straight. But he cannot help winding her up, as he pleads for a new look in time for his new school ID card photo.

Paternal grandmother Nelly Ramos (who has never quite forgiven her black son for marrying a Latina) delights in stirring the pot and encourages Zambrano to explore his fey side, as she teaches him the words to kitschy pop songs by 60s icon Henry Stephen and makes him an outfit for his photo session. Feigning concern, she asks Castillo to let her grandson live with her for a while to ease the burden. But she has no intention of letting Ramos turn Zambrano against her and drags him off to the doctor to have him examined for traces of homosexual tendencies. Peeved at being lectured for wasting the doctor's time, Castillo dresses in a party frock, gets tipsy and wakes Zambrano in the night to dance with her. However, he finds her tedious and she is forced to take out her frustration on a youth who comes to fix a bicycle.

Meanwhile, Zamabrano has developed a crush on the twentysomething who runs a small kiosk near the basketball court. Although she would quite like him as her boyfriend, Sulbarán accepts his choice and is disappointed when her prostitute mother refuses to babysit Zambrano any longer until Castillo pays her back wages. Thus, she has no option but to let her son spend more time with Ramos, while she hangs around headquarters and tries to secure a meeting with boss Beto Benites. He invites her to a barbecue at his house and he makes a fuss of Zambrano when he swims in the pool. But he is more interested in preying on Castillo and dangles the prospect of being rehired in return for some sexual favours.

As the news becoming dominated by reports on the progress of Chávez's chemotherapy and supporters shave their heads in solidarity, Zambrano falls out with Sulbarán, who says she will only like him if he poses as a soldier in his ID picture. She also gets cross when he uses cooking oil to straighten the hair of one of her dolls. Benites comes to dinner and brings Zambrano a goldfish, but he retreats to his room and is unimpressed when his mother leaves the door open so his curiosity can be piqued as she makes love with her guest. Benites tells her to report for work next day, but Zambrano has no intention of making life easy for her. He demands fried plantains for breakfast and, when Castillo refuses to get out of bed, he starts making them himself and slicks down his hair with the spare oil. He dons a hoodie belonging to the kiosk guy and, when he ignores her request to remove it, Castillo throws his goldfish out of the window.

Zambrano sulks on being left with Sulbarán and her mother, but he accompanies her to the photographer, where she dresses as a beauty queen for her ID shot. Castillo returns home with a razor so Zambrano can fix his hair, but he refuses to thank her and insists he doesn't love her, as he sets about changing his appearance. As the film ends, Zambrano stands in moody silence as his classmates sing the national anthem. But he bops around against a variety of photographic backdrops to Stephen's hit `Lemon Tree' as the closing credits roll.

Settling down after a fussy start, Micaela Cajahuaringa's visuals ably convey a confining and confusing world from a nine year-old's perspective. But, in focusing so rigorously on the battle of wills between Castillo, Ramos and Zambrano, Rondón archly suggests that the average citizen was too preoccupied with their own hills of beans to pay much attention to the plight of their ailing president. Such sly asides are echoed in the commentary on class, colour, machismo and sexuality. But Rondón avoids over-playing her hand in emphasising the human drama over the subtext. Consequently, even though it occasionally misses its step (particularly during Castillo's visits to the doctor and her clumsy hetero show and tell session), this is never anything less than playful, perceptive and poignant.

It was only a matter of time before someone took the Slumdog Millionaire formula and applied it to another city with a teeming population of haves and have-nots and sufficient poverty, injustice, corruption and violence to fuel the melodrama. Set in a lakeside favela in Rio de Janeiro, Stephen Daldry's Trash ticks all the boxes. But it's never clear who this Hollywoodised adaptation Andy Milligan's teen interest novel is aimed at. Richard Curtis's script is awash with a sentimentality that is reinforced by Tulé Peake's prettified production design and Adriano Goldman's lustrous photography, while Antônio Pinto's score ladles on the manipulative mawkishness with an intrusive disregard for subtlety or taste. Clearly, the intention is to alert the global mainstream to the problems blighting Brazil's major cities by producing a sanitised variation on Hector Babenco’s Pixote (1981) and Fernando Meirelles's City of God (2002). But all Daldry and Curtis have succeeded in doing is trivialise their subject and patronise their audience.

Flashing back from a moment of crisis, the action opens with Wagner Moura fleeing the police through the streets of Rio. He works as an aide to Stepan Nercessian, who is campaigning to become the city's new mayor. Before he is captured, tortured and killed, Moura tosses his wallet into a refuse truck and it is found by 14 year-old Rickson Tevis, as he gleans for things to recycle and sell with his friend, Eduardo Luis. They live in a favela overlooking Rio and are delighted with the windfall. However, when cop Sefton Mello comes to the rubbish tip offering a reward for the return of the wallet, he realises that the absent Tevis must have come into some easy money and orders his officers to hunt him down.

Intrigued by the key they find inside the wallet, Tevis and Luis consult their friend Gabriel Weinstein, who lives in the sewers but immediately recognises that the key comes from the lockers at the central railway station. On opening the locker, the boys find a piece of paper containing a series of numbers and a letter addressed to Nelson Xavier. Heading back to the favela, they sneak into the office of parish priest Martin Sheen and discover online that Xavier is a lawyer who has been jailed for a variety of misdemeanours. But before they can investigate further, Mello has Tevis arrested and he only just manages to escape before he can be liquidated.

Meanwhile, Luis and Weinstein have asked Sheen's assistant, Rooney Mara (a computer whizz who also teaches the street kids English) to arrange for Luis to visit Xavier in his maximum security prison. He reveals that he is Moura's uncle and that the numbers are a code that can by decrypted using passages from the Bible. Moreover, a handy flashback explains how Moura became disillusioned by Nercessian's venality and decided to steal $4 million in bribes, along a ledger containing full details of the illegal transactions.

The trio decide to stakeout Nercessian's beachside compound. But he reacts badly to being spied upon and orders Mello to round up the urchins and torch their homes. However, they remain at large and manage to crack the code, which leads them to the cemetery where Moura's daughter, Maria Eduarda, is buried in a crypt. On further investigation, they discover that Eduarda is not dead after all. But Mello arrives and coerces the kids into breaking into the crypt, so he can recover Nercessian's stash.

Miraculously, Tevis manages to overpower Mello and disarm him. However, he opts to spare his life and takes the loot back to the favela, where he shares it with the other residents by scattering the banknotes from the top of the rubbish dump. As the film ends, Rooney helps the threesome produce a video account of their exploits, which goes viral, just as the evidence from the ledger helps put Nercessian behind bars.

Daldry dots the story with snippets from this video, which enables Tevis, Luis and Weinstein to address the camera directly and keep the focus fixed on their courage and tenacity rather than the clunkier elements of Curtis's screenplay (which was translated into Portuguese by Felipe Braga). Andy Milligan based his book on his own experiences as a teacher in the favelas, but Daldry too often misses the stark realism required to convince an arthouse audience of the narrative's authenticity. He owes debts to acting coach Christian Duurvoort, who helped him coax such splendidly natural performances from his young leads, and editor Elliot Graham, whose chase sequences are pacy, intricate and compelling. But he is badly let down by the purpose-built favela, which looks far too clean and picturesque to convey the desperation that drives juvenile pickers to spend back-breaking hours combing through garbage in the hope of finding something they can sell for a few reals.

Moreover, Curtis and Daldry fail to solve the problem of why the kids would be so eager to solve the central mystery and bring Nercessian down. They also badly fumble the magic realist revelation that Moura had faked his daughter's death in a bid to protect her, while they also struggle to find anything worthwhile for Sheen and Rooney to do, as the grizzled American cleric devoted to serving the poor and the plucky liberal seeking a cause to salve her conscience. Clearly, these roles have been cast to secure funding by widening the US appeal, but they add little to the storyline and only reinforce the pandering nature of the project as a whole.

Goldman's camerawork is often nimble and well matched with hip-hop tracks by MC Cidinho, the percussive choral interludes provided by Barbatuques and the slick Os Mutantes cover. But, despite the winning charm of the teenage protagonists. Daldry and Curtis remain outsiders looking into a world they neither know nor understand and, consequently, this quickly collapses under the weight of its precarious good intentions.

A refusal to conform drives the action in actress Iram Haq's debut feature, I Am Yours, which draws on personal experience to give the story a strong ring of authenticity. Touching on the concept of being trapped between two cultures, this is primarily a rite of passage for a single mother learning to control her own urges and accept her responsibilities. Played with stark honesty and a refusal to court easy empathy by Ukrainian-Nepalese actress Amrita Acharia, this may not always make for the easiest viewing. But it suggests that Norwegian films about its Pakistani community are more flexible in their attitude and approach than some of their more rigid British counterparts.

Frustrated at being constantly reminded by parents Rabia Noreen and Sudhir Kumar Kohli what a calamitous mistake she made in divorcing architect Assad Siddique, actress Amrita Acharia is forever seeking assurance and approval in the arms of casual flings like Trond Fausa. Indeed, she devotes as much time to satiating her desire than she does auditioning for roles or caring for her six year-old son, Prince Singh, who receives much more attention when staying with his father and his new partner, Sara Khorami.

However, while trying on dresses in a shop near a film festival venue, she meets Swedish director Ola Rapace and the connection between them is instantaneous. They spend an idyllic few days together and even cavort on Henrik Ibsen's grave. But he has to return home to work on a screenplay and they skype constantly until she agrees to come to Stockholm and Rapace agrees to Singh coming with her. Initially, the boy finds being in a strange apartment difficult and insists on sleeping with his mother, even though he accuses her of not caring about him. Yet, when Rapace buys him some cool presents for his birthday, Singh loudly proclaims his love for him and Rapace is deeply uncomfortable with the outpouring of affection.

He tries to cope and coaxes Acharia into going boxing at his gym. But he is so shaken by the sight of Singh crying when they get back that he tells Acharia he isn't ready to become a father to another man's child. She is so dismayed that she leaves in the middle of the night in Rapace's car and stops to rest in a truck park. Dozing off in the front seat, she wakes to find Singh is missing and searches frantically until she finds him chatting to a driver. She makes the boy promise never to disobey her again, but she is relieved to pass him back to Siddique and Khorami.

Acharia visits her parents (who sent her back to Pakistan when she was 14 to stop her from becoming too Norwegian) and looks in on grandmother Usha Patel, who had once nursed her through an illness and given her the model elephant that is her most treasured possession. Noreen tells Acharia that her neighbours have been gossiping about her antics and she puts on a brave face as the usual criticisms are trotted out. But her spirits rise when Rapace skypes her unexpectedly and she starts stripping for him before they are interrupted by his cameraman pal, Jesper Malm. A few days later, Rapace calls again and says he is coming to Oslo and Acharia risks Siddique's wrath by taking Singh to his office and begging him to do her a favour.

But Rapace fails to show and Acharia has a crude rendezvous with Fausa at his flat. The following day, Noreen shows up at her place and berates her for the fact that Kohli had beaten her for shaming him in front of female guests who had come to supper and complained about Acharia's lewdness besmirching the honour of the entire enclave. Having calmed down, Noreen asks Acharia if she would visit more often with Singh and she agrees. She has a nice time with Singh during his next stay and is feeling good about herself when she calls on her parents with a box of sweets. However, Noreen sourly informs her that she is banished from the house for humiliating her and, as Acharia looks in on her grandmother, she also seems to look away from her as she lies in bed.

That night, Acharia gets drunk and picks up bashful hunk Tobias Santelmann in a bar. He gives her a lift on the back of his bicycle, but she suddenly seems to sober up and heads home. When Singh next visits, she slips the elephant model into his rucksack and leaves him in the corridor outside Siddique's apartment. She appears to contemplate jumping from a bridge on to the railway line, but she calls Santelmann and asks if she can come and see him. They dance to loud music and she makes a lustful lunge for him. But he pushes her away and she begins sobbing uncontrollably and he holds her in a bid to console her. As the film cuts to black, Acharia strides out into the night, with her future very much in the balance.

Having impressed with the shorts Old Faithful and Little Miss Eyeflap, Haq makes an solid feature bow as both writer and director. Her script may occasionally present her heroine in a staunchly unflattering light, but she uses Cecilie Semec and Marek Wieser's restless camerawork to convey the skittish neediness that the excellent Acharia exposes along with her vulnerability. She is well supported by Rapace, Noreen and Singh, who is touchingly aware that he seems to be in the way of his mother's happiness, while Haq's direction takes its cue from Even Vaa's score in that it keeps the audience focused without telling them what to think or feel.

Finally, this week, Elizabeth Marcus brings her long-gestating documentary, No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers, to the screen. Started back in 2005, when the Welsh rockers started work on their eighth studio album, Send Away the Tigers, this is very much a fan's eye view that presumes everyone watching knows every song from the first note and the significance of all the lyrics. Consequently, no attempt is made to provide a chronological overview of the Manics's evolution before and after the disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards from the Embassy Hotel on the Bayswater Road in London on 1 February 1995. Clearly, the release date has been chosen to coincide with the anniversary, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much is missing and a good deal must have changed since Marcus last spoke to bassist Nicky Wire, drummer Sean Moore and vocalist-cum-guitarist James Dean Bradfield on camera around the release of 2009's Journal for Plague Lovers, which made use of the lyrics that Edwards had left behind.

Following a series of captions explaining that Manic Street Preachers were a 90s underground band whose fame has tailed off since peaking around the Millennium, Marcus invites Bradfield, Wire and Moore to reflect on their careers during breaks in rehearsals for the album they hope will put them back on top. Naturally modest and reluctant to play at being rock stars, they recall vague details about their childhood personalities and how Bradfield and Wire decided to form a group in the mid-1980s, while pals at school in the town of Blackwood in South Wales. Although he then played the trumpet, Moore joined soon afterwards and the original line-up was completed by Miles `Flicker' Woodward.

Marcus intercuts footage of the Manics's first gig, when they were barracked by Cardiff City fans chanting taunts about Swansea City. Wire was also attacked by a punk who rushed the stage, but they are happy to concede that they still had much to learn and Bradfield posits that they were lucky to be learning the ropes around the time of the Miners' Strike, as it taught them to channel their anger and realise that they could be as politicised as such heroes as The Clash and Billy Bragg. The trio also agree that they became a better outfit after the release of their first single, `Suicide Alley' (1988), when Woodward quit and Edwards (who had previously been something of a gopher) was invited to become the new rhythm guitarist.

As he began to form a fruitful lyrical partnership with Wire, the Manic Street Preachers became notorious for boasting that their ambition was to split up after selling 16 million copies of their debut album. Indeed, they were regarded with some suspicion in certain quarters of the music press until Edwards carved `4Real' into his forearm during an interview with the NME's Steve Lamacq. But Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller pops up to state that there is nothing wrong with rock musicians reading books and wanting to be taken seriously for trying to say something worthwhile, and the army of unnamed Manics fans (whose talking-head asides pepper the action) earnestly agree with Wire's contention that they largely succeeded in their aim to produce `loud, anthemic rock with intelligent lyrics'.

A case in point is `Let Robeson Sing', which allows Marcus to juxtapose concert footage with a clip from Pen Tennyson's The Proud Valley (1940), featuring Edward Rigby and Paul Robeson, the African-American actor-singer who was persecuted as much for his politics as for the colour of his skin. But Marcus doesn't linger on any topic for long and cuts in part of an interview in which Bradfield admits that the band had a manifesto of sorts when it started out, but has since broken pretty much every tenet. Wire extols his virtues as a performer before Bradfield gives Marcus a straight-faced, post-Tap tour of his guitar collection and concedes that playing music makes him aggressive.

He has nothing but admiration for Moore's discipline in providing a steady beat and he is grateful for the rhythm drive he creates in conjunction with Wire, whose ability to turn out lyrics of poetry and potency he clearly admires. Footage follows of Bradfield picking out a tune while Moore and Wire sprawl on sofas before an unnamed roadie and a clutch of fans declare them to be the best live band in the world and laud them for taking the trouble to meet them at the stage door after gigs. Having once camped out to meet Rush, Wire is aware of the sacrifices they make and is always happy to do interviews with fanzines.

The focus now shifts to Moore, who shows Marcus his gun collection and takes her to a firing range, as Bradfield and Wire own up to not always knowing what is going on in his head. In the next sequence, Bradfield proves himself a dab hand at cooking breakfast, while Wire is shown pottering around the garden of his new home with his beloved black Labrador. However, Bradfield jokes that Wire is just as capable of coming out with eccentric statements and old footage shows some of his more bizarre stage outfits.

Harking back a decade, Marcus ponders the lyrics the increasingly gaunt and disturbed Edwards wrote for the 1994 album, The Holy Bible. Bradfield suggests they were an admission that Edwards had gone too far with some of his lifestyle choices and was now concerned that there was no way back from his anorexia and mental health issues. Fans speculate about whether Edwards jumped off a bridge in Bristol and drowned or whether he planned his disappearance and is living in quiet isolation. But they are full of admiration for the fact that Bradfield, Wire and Moore had the strength to go on and even change direction with `A Design for Life', which became a huge chart hit in 1996.

A raft of major awards followed, but the Manics couldn't break America and Marcus slips in footage of trendy New Yorkers who hadn't heard of them. Wire reckons a combination of poor luck and some worse decisions spoilt their chances Stateside. But Marcus is too restless to dwell and thrusts us into the studio, as the band rehearse `Imperial Bodybags' and Bradfield and Wire have a friendly discussion about whether another number is working or not. This frank exchange leads into a section on the cutting honesty of the fans that is illuminated with some animated cutaways that feel a touch self-conscious. But Bradfield shrugs that mistakes are inevitable when a band has been together for so long and they laugh off complaints about everything from Edwards's singing voice, yellow eye shadow, feather boas, badges, a controversial free download and the frequent use of swear words.

A more intimate moment follows, as Wire and Bradfield get to meet Rush bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson and they pose like fans in a corridor holding a treasure t-shirt. However, Marcus soon returns to the history lesson, as the 1998 album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and the spin-off single `If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next' top the charts. The 2000 single, The Masses Against the Classes', repeated the feat and Moore admits to a certain satisfaction at enjoying overnight success after being together for 13 years.

At the crest of this wave, the Manics played the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on 31 December 1999. However, their 2001 tour of Cuba drew less favourable headlines and Bradfield is now willing to admit that shaking hands with Fidel Castro might have been a mistake. He also has serious misgivings about `The Love of Richard Nixon', which was culled from the 2004 album, Lifeblood, whose cool critical reception put pressure on the Manics to bounce back with Send Away the Tigers. Their relief at the positive reception is as evident as their delight in being presented with the Godlike Genius award by the NME, which prompted them to return to Edwards's final lyrics and Wire, Bradfield and Moore discuss briefly how they felt his presence during the recording of Journal for Plague Lovers.

In a closing coda, Wire acknowledges the importance of being Welsh and his bandmates agree that they deserve a slap on the back for remaining pretty normal, given what they have been through. Indeed, this sense of being ordinary blokes comes through loud and clear throughout this enjoyable, if somewhat garbled profile. Marcus was clearly determined to avoid following a career route map and aficionados will probably appreciate her scattershot approach. But, while she has unearthed plenty of vintage audio and video material, she clutters proceedings with the fleeting monochrome clips from Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983), while the decision not to use captions to identify any of the songs will frustrate those coming to the Manics with little more than a basic knowledge.

Perhaps in deference to Edwards's family or the band's reluctance to speak at length, Marcus rather sidesteps the thorny issues surrounding his psychological state and the circumstances of his disappearance (his presumed death was confirmed on 23 November 2008). But this leaves a gaping hole at the heart of the film that the gushings of anonymous fans scarcely fills. Indeed, one suspects Marcus is too much of a fan to risk asking any truly awkward questions and the trio get a rather easy ride about life on the road and their failure to crack America when so many other British acts were cleaning up. Nevertheless, all three come across well and one can only wish them well, even though Bradfield admits not liking The Beatles.