Like clockwork, this feature opens with a voiceover. The audience quickly discovers that Coil were an experimental English group fronted by two gay men: John Balance and Peter Christopherson. Active for more than 20 years, Coil disbanded due to Balance’s death in 2004. Christopherson followed his lover/musical partner in 2010. Directors Maxime Lachaud and Xavier Laradji unearthed Coil’s filmography, and have compiled a work that peers at their shared art over the course of three decades.
A Way to Die: The Short Films of Coil is not for the faint-hearted. Early on there is a crisp black-and-white vignette of a man masturbating. Later on, the movie includes a segment in which a male mutilates his prisoner. There are ample clips of penis: men pulling up and down their trousers. Although there isn’t a narrative per se, themes do crop up. Violence, glamour, subservience and perfume are all part of the finished work. It moves much like an art installation, one silhouette opening up to another; lands apart.
The movie jumps not only in time, but geography. One scene takes place in grey 1970s’ Britain, another in steamy Thailand during the 1990s. The first half hour is done virtually in silence, with only the pulsating music to accompany the visuals. Recognising the ambience, Lachaud and Laradji wisely insert a perfume ad starring Jane Seymour of Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973). Christopherson directed commercials starring glamorous models, Joan Collins being one example. Finally, words arrive into the feature.
A Way to Die: The Short Films of Coil is concerned neither with the story nor with linear thinking. It grows more outlandish and loquacious the deeper the viewer sits through the work. Balance and Christopherson make jokes about throwing themselves into the Thai waters from a bridge, showcasing their fearlessness as creatives. For Coil, no idea was off-limits, which might explain their decision to direct a man setting himself on fire.
The way it’s shot is amateurish – you can visibly see there is no one sitting in the chair as it sets alight – but where the film lacks authenticity it compensates in bravery. Fittingly, the credits, set to disco dances, pay tribute to the duo of deceased artists. Soft Cell singer Marc Almond pops up across the film, as does Gavin Friday of Virgin Prunes fame. The archive footage interweaves beautifully with the stylised videos Coil pieced together.
In 1985, Coil issued a cover of Soft Cell standard Tainted Love, complete with a promo of a man dying from Aids. This anthological movie includes the music video in full: wasps walk on honey, while wheelchaired patients roll themselves to their graves. Although that section is 40 years old, it is a harrowing reminder that the virus ruined the lives for many queer men. Showing his blessing for the remake, Marc Almond made a cameo as a leather-bound man taunting the sickly character in his bed.
The segment ends with a person visiting the grave of the Aids victim. Given that Balance and Christopherson are no longer around, it has added pathos. But much of the footage is more joyful, not least a section in which Thai boys waltz around in various forms of undress. Even the setpiece of a psycho chopping into his victim’s penis is done comedically. Bits of food being thrown on the prisoner as a substitute for human guts. Art doesn’t always have to boast straightforward meaning in order to to shock. Often the lack of answer makes the exhibition more unsettling.
By piecing this movie in such a non-linear fashion, the directors/editors have seemingly subscribed to the theory that films are meant to represent dreams. Part of the work is nightmarish, other bits more ebullient, but it pivots along like a fantasy audiences would experience in their sleep. A Way to Die: The Short Films of Coil is very streamy, bringing the viewer headfirst into the unconventional mind of two artists at play.
A Way to Die: the Short-Films of Coil shows in the 12th edition of the Doc’n Roll Film Festival.
