| ENGLISH SCHEME : Lindsay Anderson's 'O Lucky Man! (1973) [7/10] |
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| Monday, 13 March 2006 | |
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O Lucky Man! obtained a rare big-screen outing at the 2006 Bradford Film Festival, when shown as part of the UK's first ever Malcolm McDowell retrospective. McDowell himself introduced the Sunday-morning screening, cradling a large take-out cup (beaker?) of Costa coffee under his arm - an ideal choice of 'prop,' that, as the film (at one early stage actually entitled Coffee Man) was based on his own experiences as a coffee-salesman. One presumes - and hopes - that McDowell's real-life adventures weren't as hectic and harrowing as those endured by his fictional alter ego Mick Travis, however. Because the coffee-salesman idea is really just a starting-point for a wild, ramshackle series of picaresque episodes, through which we (and he) move with the kind of sinister illogic more usually to be found in particularly vivid nightmares. David Sherwin's script introduces Travis as a kind of capitalist Candide, wide-eyed and sunnily optimistic in his devotion to the entrepreneurial spirit. Covering large swathes of England, he encounters a range of institutions (military; financial; medical; political) which invariably reveal themselves as corrupt, venal and oppressive. Travis isn't so much lucky as opportunistic: he goes with the flow as and when it presents itself, ending up as sidekick/accomplice to an especially nasty and amoral proto-Thatcherite mogul (Ralph Richardson) in his dealings with a repressive African 'banana republic.' Travis's journey has at this point taken him from hawker of coffee to facilitator of genocide - and it isn't over yet... Director Anderson explicitly presents O Lucky Man! as a sprawling state-of-the-nation polemic: his vision is of Britain as a semi-moribund zone of ennui, increasingly out of place in a world it once dominated. The days of Empire seem long gone: instead the country seems to hover on the verge of some final, cataclysmic collapse - though solidly located within a specifically British cinematic lineage (see also Charlie Bubbles, A Clockwork Orange, The Long Good Friday, Radio On and Robinson In Space), O Lucky Man! would work just fine as a double-bill companion to Jorge Grau's similarly bleak vision of an anomie-plagued England, 1974's gleefully gory The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. Except that would be a decidedly lengthy evening at the pictures, O Lucky Man! clocking in at the best part of three hours thanks to the bagginess of its much-rewritten screenplay and Anderson's multi-target ambition. The picture is defiantly uneven, a compendium of sketch-like sequences (some inspired, others less so) held together by McDowell's slightly larger-than-life performance, David Gladwell's editing (including some coyly unhelpful geographical intertitles, and many jarring cuts to black) and the perkily satirical score by Alan Price, who is frequently seen performing the tunes - which comment upon and 'bleed into' the film's action - in a smoky studio strewn with half-empty Newcastle Brown Ale bottles. In another ploy to unify this ungainly material (and also, perhaps, skimp on the budget) Anderson gives many of the supporting actors several roles each - including Rachel Roberts (sensual), Mona Washbourne, Arthur Lowe (impressive) and Dandy Nicholls, the latter particularly memorable as an unflappable tea-lady who interrupts a drolly Kafkaesque interrogation/torture sequence. Even Richardson 'doubles up,' contributing a show-stoppingly dry turn as a bedsit philosopher whose parting advice to Travis is very simple: "Try not to die like a dog." It's notable, however, that Helen Mirren is always rebellious heiress Patricia - and Edward Judd's appearances are restricted to one deliciously suave/sinister (and notably well-cast) cameo. But what really holds the picture together is Anderson's tone: snarky, sarky, scabrously sour, pitilessly misanthropic, bluntly Swiftian in his extremity and excess. He can barely suppress a sardonic sneer when he appears (as himself) during the glibly self-referential finale, in which Travis is "cast" as the hero in Anderson's new project O Lucky Man! This process involves Travis/McDowell being brusquely smacked across the head with the script by Anderson... and while the audience may feel like they've endured a similar kind of assault, we, like Travis, realise we're better off for the experience. The nightmare may not be quite over - but at least we've woken up, and are finally smelling the coffee. Neil Young 13th March, 2005 O LUCKY MAN! : [7/10] : UK 1973 : Lindsay ANDERSON : 170 mins (BBFC timing : original version certificated in 1973 runs 184m) seen at Pictureville cinema, NMPFT, Bradford, (UK), 5th March 2006 - public show - Bradford Film Festival (retrospectives for Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm McDowell) click HERE for other films reviewed at Bradford 2006 O'er grassy dale, and lowland scene  Come see, come hear, the English Scheme. The lower-class, want brass, bad chests, scrounge fags. The clever ones tend to emigrate Like your psychotic big brother, who left home For jobs in Holland, Munich, Rome He's thick but he struck it rich, switch The commune crap, camp bop, middle-class, flip-flop Guess that's why they end up in bands He's the green piece in us all He's the creep-creep in us all Condescends to black men Very nice to them They talk of Chile while driving through Haslingdon You got sixty hour weeks, and stone stone toilet back-gardens Peter Cook's jokes, bad dope, check shirts, lousy groups Point their fingers at America Down pokey quaint streets in Cambridge Cycles our distant spastic heritage Its a gay red, roundhead, army career, grim head If we was smart we'd emigrate. |
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