This portrait of Marianne Faithfull is a remarkable thing. Created by artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, those who saw their Nick Cave biopic, 20,000 Days on Earth will know that the pair do not abide by the usual documentary conventions, and here it applies again.
The framing device is a fictional one, in which Tilda Swinton and George MacKay play investigators for The Ministry of Not Forgetting, a kind of Orwellian department in charge of protecting cultural memories from being lost. While the conceit is occasionally grating, it’s point is obvious when it comes to Marianne Faithfull: not so much that she will be forgotten, but that she will only be remembered in a certain way. You know, as Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the 60s, the one found naked in a rug by police during a drugs bust (with the Mars Bar urban myth as an addendum), the one who became a junkie, before she drifted away.
