(This review was written in August 2014.)
I saw it back around
February, but as Picturehouse were doing a screening of it, I thought I'd go
along and rewatch O Lucky Man! (which my mum joined me for, either
for a) she was interested or b) NO YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE OUT ALONE IN THE
CENTRE OF TOWN AT 11PM I'LL GIVE YOU A LIFT BACK)
As much as I thought I knew this film, I didn't. It's surprising how much of what seemed like such a vivid experience at the time goes away in the space of just a few months, if not weeks. I'm usually against rewatching, but actually with a second viewing (after so little time) made this film a lot more cohesive.
And it's not a cohesive film, really. It's a ridiculous film. The very conceit of a young man, played by Malcolm McDowell, kicked out of high school and ending up in a job in an incredibly 70s coffee bean factory, is then taken up to the highest level purely because this woman giving a talk finds him cute as fuck and is able to give a smile, and then goes around the north of England selling coffee beans to potential buyers to very little success is frankly ridiculous. The misadventures of a coffee bean seller is certainly not an idea to carry a 3 hour film.
And yet, it does so. I can't say it's better than If; certainly it's more surreal than If.
Interspersed with studio footage (the studio being a worn down room) of a down on their luck band (who become characters later on in the film, travelling across the country in a van with Helen Mirren), singing the central, titular lyric of If you learn the reason to live and not to die then you are a lucky man, the film covers everything from government distrust and mistrust, God and religion, existential crises, finding a job and place in this world, poverty and deprecation, the modern world of fame and fortune, being a good person, etc.
It's a snapshot of Britain in an age which simply doesn't exist anymore, the world where poverty represents people no-one gives a shit for (the woman caring for people living on the street immediately drops them once Mick volunteers to help out, only to find them literally staking him) and still dress as cawing mothers from the 50s. In one particularly harrowing scene we see a house of poverty with at least 10 or 15 mothers all around, Mick trying to ascend the staircase - and the side of the building - to talk it over with a woman, Mrs. Richards, about to kill herself, with her son and daughter in the room with her, quite compliant to help out not understanding the full extent of what is about to happen. She remains calm and maintains an intelligent dialogue with Mick, Mick taking the words of philosophers and saying to her "life is a gift"; yet she understands the reality that she cannot support her family on merely loaves of bread. This is a dank and depressing world of thievery where mothers take their own lives merely because of family, and Helen Mirren's character finds herself so easily thrown out on the street by her insanely rich Lord of a father.
What we see is Mick going through an accelerated version of the workforce, one which leaves numerous plotholes no-one really cares about in the way the film is told. No sooner does Mick get a job than he gets the highest position in this (shoddy) job, only to then find himself with bitches (a scene I really wished I hadn't seen in my mum's company; scenes of naked breasts, sex shows with Santa Claus and the incredibly racist 'chocolate sandwich', which I won't explain to you now; I'm more of a granary person myself), and then after a fair bit of getting lost towards Scotland and government interrogation and God (in a pastoral, anachronistic harvest community) and volunteering for £140 to become a human lab rat in order to find a way to extend human life (as we are told, "humanity will destroy itself by the year 2010"), (don't ask), he becomes a roadie with the band (immediately getting intimate with Helen Mirren). The morning right after they meet, they're already kissing as if longtime lovers, and he's already leaving. Within 45 minutes, he's speaking to her father, concerned about her. Within hours of that, he's now her father's personal assistant, attending conferences with presidents from across the world (including an African president played, hilariously, by Arthur Lowe in blackface), before being marked as a treasoner, laid the blame for the rich's crime because the government is willing to ignore the rich, and the rich are just as happy to drop him, despite his inherited fashionable suits, cigarettes and whiskey. Five years later, he's released from prison - along with the band (don't ask) - and he's at the bottom. By the end of the film he's reached the city of lights, London, and he finds fame - in a film titled O Lucky Man!
The other question is raises his how one presents the self - why must one smile when "there's nothing to smile about"? Yet the film ends with the faintest hint of Mick's smile - and then a big musical number with the entire cast of the film. The real reason for sitting around for three hours is because at the opening he puts on a smile - and as the film progresses he begins to question that smile. And I can totally relate to the falseness of being nice and being happy, and the falseness of being polite to people just with a smile. Because a smile says so much; happy, content, appreciate, friends, yes.
What we find is a passé attitude towards death. When two men die in a car crash, the police immediately appear and then leave everything as it is. When a man commits suicide, taking a guard with him, the businessman in the room calls everyone in for a 15 second elegy, arranges the funeral immediately, and then speaks as if nothing has happened. No one gives a shit; it's stated as a fact and there's no fluff placed around it. It's critical of the idea of Christianity; in one scene Mick gives a massive donation to The Salvation Army, straight out of prison. Initially they praise his good deed; then when he reveals the words of (atheistic) philosophers to them, they gather to pray for his soul and get him back on the right track; the good deed of charity becomes irrelevant; ironic, because charity is one of the main aims of Christianity.
In its style, Anderson is incredibly experimental, and I'd say more so than the b&w/colour world (which was purely a budgetary thing, anyway) of If. The soundtrack is either the band, radio broadcasts on war, depression, etc., or entirely absent. I'd love to make a film in the same way, where the soundtrack is the real world. Because the real world has no soundtrack, except on the radio or an iPod; it has nothing to indicate adrenalin except for sensations in the body and everyday sounds of everyday objects. Of course to make such a thing engaging depends heavily on the strength of the actors.
His transitions, as I mentioned, is band footage, but he also uses cuts (not even fades) to black, jump cuts, etc. It's such an immediate and stark change that it makes for an interesting - kind of unnerving - experience.
Oh, and nobody forgot about A Clockwork Orange either. Someone on Tumblr joked this is A Clockwork Orange 2, which I guess is kind of true. Although a nicer character than Alex, Mick does become promiscuous, and through luck itself becomes a criminal always at odds with the law, although for more ridiculous reasons (in an early scene, he witnesses a car crash and the police tell him not to give a statement, otherwise it might incriminate him. Soon after, he's arrested for trespassing as a Russian spy and is given a ridiculous level or torture just for parking his car outside a military base.) Then during the experiments, his eyes are stretched exactly as happens to Alex, and Helen Mirren's father is, would you believe, a Mr. Burgess (maybe not Tony, but yeah.)
As much as I thought I knew this film, I didn't. It's surprising how much of what seemed like such a vivid experience at the time goes away in the space of just a few months, if not weeks. I'm usually against rewatching, but actually with a second viewing (after so little time) made this film a lot more cohesive.
And it's not a cohesive film, really. It's a ridiculous film. The very conceit of a young man, played by Malcolm McDowell, kicked out of high school and ending up in a job in an incredibly 70s coffee bean factory, is then taken up to the highest level purely because this woman giving a talk finds him cute as fuck and is able to give a smile, and then goes around the north of England selling coffee beans to potential buyers to very little success is frankly ridiculous. The misadventures of a coffee bean seller is certainly not an idea to carry a 3 hour film.
And yet, it does so. I can't say it's better than If; certainly it's more surreal than If.
Interspersed with studio footage (the studio being a worn down room) of a down on their luck band (who become characters later on in the film, travelling across the country in a van with Helen Mirren), singing the central, titular lyric of If you learn the reason to live and not to die then you are a lucky man, the film covers everything from government distrust and mistrust, God and religion, existential crises, finding a job and place in this world, poverty and deprecation, the modern world of fame and fortune, being a good person, etc.
It's a snapshot of Britain in an age which simply doesn't exist anymore, the world where poverty represents people no-one gives a shit for (the woman caring for people living on the street immediately drops them once Mick volunteers to help out, only to find them literally staking him) and still dress as cawing mothers from the 50s. In one particularly harrowing scene we see a house of poverty with at least 10 or 15 mothers all around, Mick trying to ascend the staircase - and the side of the building - to talk it over with a woman, Mrs. Richards, about to kill herself, with her son and daughter in the room with her, quite compliant to help out not understanding the full extent of what is about to happen. She remains calm and maintains an intelligent dialogue with Mick, Mick taking the words of philosophers and saying to her "life is a gift"; yet she understands the reality that she cannot support her family on merely loaves of bread. This is a dank and depressing world of thievery where mothers take their own lives merely because of family, and Helen Mirren's character finds herself so easily thrown out on the street by her insanely rich Lord of a father.
What we see is Mick going through an accelerated version of the workforce, one which leaves numerous plotholes no-one really cares about in the way the film is told. No sooner does Mick get a job than he gets the highest position in this (shoddy) job, only to then find himself with bitches (a scene I really wished I hadn't seen in my mum's company; scenes of naked breasts, sex shows with Santa Claus and the incredibly racist 'chocolate sandwich', which I won't explain to you now; I'm more of a granary person myself), and then after a fair bit of getting lost towards Scotland and government interrogation and God (in a pastoral, anachronistic harvest community) and volunteering for £140 to become a human lab rat in order to find a way to extend human life (as we are told, "humanity will destroy itself by the year 2010"), (don't ask), he becomes a roadie with the band (immediately getting intimate with Helen Mirren). The morning right after they meet, they're already kissing as if longtime lovers, and he's already leaving. Within 45 minutes, he's speaking to her father, concerned about her. Within hours of that, he's now her father's personal assistant, attending conferences with presidents from across the world (including an African president played, hilariously, by Arthur Lowe in blackface), before being marked as a treasoner, laid the blame for the rich's crime because the government is willing to ignore the rich, and the rich are just as happy to drop him, despite his inherited fashionable suits, cigarettes and whiskey. Five years later, he's released from prison - along with the band (don't ask) - and he's at the bottom. By the end of the film he's reached the city of lights, London, and he finds fame - in a film titled O Lucky Man!
The other question is raises his how one presents the self - why must one smile when "there's nothing to smile about"? Yet the film ends with the faintest hint of Mick's smile - and then a big musical number with the entire cast of the film. The real reason for sitting around for three hours is because at the opening he puts on a smile - and as the film progresses he begins to question that smile. And I can totally relate to the falseness of being nice and being happy, and the falseness of being polite to people just with a smile. Because a smile says so much; happy, content, appreciate, friends, yes.
What we find is a passé attitude towards death. When two men die in a car crash, the police immediately appear and then leave everything as it is. When a man commits suicide, taking a guard with him, the businessman in the room calls everyone in for a 15 second elegy, arranges the funeral immediately, and then speaks as if nothing has happened. No one gives a shit; it's stated as a fact and there's no fluff placed around it. It's critical of the idea of Christianity; in one scene Mick gives a massive donation to The Salvation Army, straight out of prison. Initially they praise his good deed; then when he reveals the words of (atheistic) philosophers to them, they gather to pray for his soul and get him back on the right track; the good deed of charity becomes irrelevant; ironic, because charity is one of the main aims of Christianity.
In its style, Anderson is incredibly experimental, and I'd say more so than the b&w/colour world (which was purely a budgetary thing, anyway) of If. The soundtrack is either the band, radio broadcasts on war, depression, etc., or entirely absent. I'd love to make a film in the same way, where the soundtrack is the real world. Because the real world has no soundtrack, except on the radio or an iPod; it has nothing to indicate adrenalin except for sensations in the body and everyday sounds of everyday objects. Of course to make such a thing engaging depends heavily on the strength of the actors.
His transitions, as I mentioned, is band footage, but he also uses cuts (not even fades) to black, jump cuts, etc. It's such an immediate and stark change that it makes for an interesting - kind of unnerving - experience.
Oh, and nobody forgot about A Clockwork Orange either. Someone on Tumblr joked this is A Clockwork Orange 2, which I guess is kind of true. Although a nicer character than Alex, Mick does become promiscuous, and through luck itself becomes a criminal always at odds with the law, although for more ridiculous reasons (in an early scene, he witnesses a car crash and the police tell him not to give a statement, otherwise it might incriminate him. Soon after, he's arrested for trespassing as a Russian spy and is given a ridiculous level or torture just for parking his car outside a military base.) Then during the experiments, his eyes are stretched exactly as happens to Alex, and Helen Mirren's father is, would you believe, a Mr. Burgess (maybe not Tony, but yeah.)
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