Penelope Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part III is the best film in the trilogy and perhaps the best film in Spheeris’s filmography. In focusing more on punk’s fans than on the musicians, she’s able to dig more deeply into the culture and paint a more accurate portrait of the youth who live on the fringes of society and inspired some of her earlier films. It’s a truly heartbreaking, sobering work of documentary filmmaking. Spheeris has an obvious affection for her interview subjects, a deep empathy for these self-described “gutter punks” who were forced to the margins by parental abuse, addiction, and countless other traumas. We come to care so much for the film’s interview subjects that late film revelations come as gut-punches that are hard shake even after the credits roll.
