1968 British dramaRating: 16/20
Plot: Reality and fantasy blur as Mick challenges the establishment and prematurely covers up his sins.
This is A Clockwork Orange's Malcolm McDowell's first film, and like his role as Alex, he's probably the only person who could have played Mick. Definitely touches of Alex in this character though. The cup overfloweth visually and thematically. Scenes featuring grown men in drawers, wandering repressed women, tigresses, bottled fetuses, and flung grenades. Ideas? Commentary on war? Commentary on alienation? Commentary on love and sex? Commentary on freedom? Commentary on conformity? Commentary on anarchy? Satirical and slyly surrealistic. I'm reminded of Naked and of Fight Club and Saved by the Bell (The College Years), for some reason, Dazed and Confused even though If.... isn't anything like those movies. There are some clunky scenes and a stuffy feel with a lot of the movie, the latter probably because it's English. And for no seemingly good reason (my research indicates that the reason was strictly financial), the movie switches from black and white to color randomly. However, there was tons to love about this, and it's definitely a movie to see again to see if any pieces fall together.
Here's John Merrick watching this movie:
4 comments:
Yeah, the cup overfloweth and then left an unappealing mess on the floor. I'm glad you mentioned the confusing black and white/ color issue. I wasted of fair amount of time trying to figure out what I was missing.
This was a big tease of a movie. The first half (before the diner tiger scene) was intense and compelling. I really thought the film was going somewhere. Then it just got weird and the ending is a totally confusing cop-out. Maybe the makers didn't dare to go all the way in 1968. The acting is good and it could have been a great film. Instead, it gets a 14.
That reminds me...I need to see this one again. I sort of liked the weirdness (you type "weird" as if it's a bad thing) and thought it fit in well with the story. It needed to be weird as that was a big part of the movie's voice.
I disagree. The first half was a realistic approach toward a repressive and anachronistic British school system. There was no element of fantasy and, as I said, a tension was developing that I thought would explode in a thought-provoking way. Instead it evolved into a series of scenes where I had no idea what was real and what the point was. I am OK with a certain amount of ambiguity, but not when it feels random and confused and sinks a promising story. "Weird" is often a dirty word for me because I think making a cohesive, meaningful film is hard, while just throwing random crap in for the purpose of seeming "deep" or arty is incredibly easy and often pretentious. I don't think this film went off as much as many others, which is why I gave it the 1968 out, I just think it ruined a good idea and went WAY over the top (like McDowell on the rooftop with the machine gun, and the girl shooting the headmaster in the forehead). I am probably too impatient when it comes to this issue, but when a filmmaker starts to inject too much of this stuff into a movie, I start to question whether they really know what they are doing, or whether they are just bullshitting me, and why can't they make their point understandable. I also am not a big fan of poetry, which is also probably a flaw of mine. Tolerance for this seems to be the biggest difference between our view on movies.
Oh, it's absolutely our biggest difference. I'm a fan of surrealism and, for lack of a better word, weird. My own writing is surreal (probably because it's easy!) or, I like to think at least, in the realm of magical realism, naturally because I'm attracted to that sort of stuff in books, movies, even music. And there are definitely movies where the weirdness seems cheap and adds nothing at all to the film, and different movies will seem that way for different people. I love that Jodorowsky movie ('Holy Mountain') but would have a tough time arguing that it's not weird-for-the-sake-of-weird nonsense. With 'If...,' I think there's a good blend of realism and fantasy, with the fantasy almost working like an escape for McDowell's character. It left me guessing about what was real and what was not (I don't think the final rooftop scene was real).
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