Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin is the third Doherty film to hit screens recently. Wait all day for documentaries about the Libertines frontman’s turbulent life and more. There was a Channel 4 movie about Louis Theroux’s death in November, his unsolved death after attending a house party with Doherty in 2006. He cast an unsparing eye on Doherty’s new life in France, where he lives with his wife Katia de Vidas (from 2021). Stranger in My Own Skin was released in theaters around the same time, but it’s now on TV. The film uses personal, unflinching footage accumulated since 2006 to tell the very intimate story of Dougherty’s decades-long addiction. It should be very intimate. Direction and principal photography is by De Vidas.
Obviously, this is for the fans, and what you gain in intimacy, you lose in objectivity and perspective. Those expecting a recreation of Theroux’s minute gaze will not find it here. The entire section lingers on Doherty’s paintings and poetry, his many side projects, and how much he has been loved over the years. In fact, the story begins rather disappointingly, with Doherty’s flowery, poetic narration guiding us through the story. Doherty says, “There is no such thing as a neatly organized story.” At this stage he’s clocking a two-hour screen time, and you might be wondering if he has the stomach for this kind of thing for 120 minutes. The song, his first 20 minutes, runs through the heyday of the early Libertines and the later Babyshambles, and manages to capture what was so fascinating and exciting at the time. At the risk of sounding like James Murphy in “Losing My Edge,” LCD Soundsystem’s timeless paean to aging, I was there (at least in part) to know that it really is It was thrilling, messy and vibrant. I’m not sure if it was the Beatles in Hamburg, as former Rough Trade A&R man James Endiacott suggests in the film, but it was definitely a moment.
But this isn’t about the glory days, it’s about the ignominious turmoil surrounding Doherty’s long association with hard drugs, which he describes without ever glossing over. De Vidas first began filming him in Paris in 2006, long after his addiction began and several years after The Libertines first disbanded. Doherty was in and out of prison, and it was anyone’s guess whether he would show up or not. He describes the first time he realized he was addicted to heroin, and the historical footage here often shows him agitated and agitated, or his sleepy and drooling. It’s dripping down. There is clear footage of him taking drugs. With all the talk about the freedom and artistry of Wilde, Dostoyevsky and his beloved James Joyce, and the strange nostalgia inherent in calling heroin “opium tincture,” Even if you don’t, you may be wondering if there are any risks, such as: It glorified, or at least romanticized, his addiction and set him up as a kind of social outlaw. Overall, I don’t think it’s romantic. It’s so hopeless and gloomy that it often just makes everything seem so sad. It’s really sad to see him delaying going to rehab in Thailand just because it’s just “one more thing.”
Theroux seems to understand the ongoing, perhaps even still, love for all that drug use represented for Dougherty, but the film tends to avoid that kind of deeper analysis. This shows the life of an addict, but you don’t really follow through to the end, just picking threads that interest you more. He talks a little about his difficult relationship with his military father, about his years as a tabloid reporter, and even a little about prison, but these clear-eyed interludes are mostly suspended in the air, half-formed. and meanders in a different direction. Paintings, poems, songs, etc.
In this regard, it can be a frustrating watch. In the end, you want a more objective eye, a more focused perspective that can sift through hours of footage and compile it into something more dreamlike and abstract. But when honesty and insight emerge, they surprise others. The scene where Doherty goes back to heroin, knows he’s on the wrong path, and admits he’s afraid of dying is vivid, but it’s even more vivid because he asked not to be filmed. De Vidas shot this film, one of the benefits of having an up-close-and-personal experience with him. Years later, he appears to have recovered, but that he was able to move on beyond that stands as a strange symbol of hope.
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