There are at least half a dozen moments of inspired surrealism, or at least, something that comes very close to surrealism without crossing the line. A pity I can't tell you what they are; it's best if they take you by surprise.
A pity also that the film as a whole is such an incoherent jumble. Surrealist or semi-surrealist moments can give a coherent film a real kick - consider the giant face that suddenly appears on the skyline in "Brazil", or the ballet sequence in "The Red Shoes". Here, they do little more than keep us hoping against hope.
You might have heard the film flits between colour and black and white in the most perplexing way. You may also have heard that the director, Lindsay Anderson, claims this is was done for purely economic reasons. Oh - so that makes it okay? I wasted a lot of time because I was under the impression that colour represented one thing, and black and white another; once that idea is abandoned, all that's left is to absorb the overall effect of semi-random alternation. It's like flicking through a scrapbook. This is appropriate, given the disorded nature of the film, and not ENTIRELY a bad thing. The best that can be made of this film is a kind of demented school yearbook, which is certainly better than nothing.
A pity also that the film as a whole is such an incoherent jumble. Surrealist or semi-surrealist moments can give a coherent film a real kick - consider the giant face that suddenly appears on the skyline in "Brazil", or the ballet sequence in "The Red Shoes". Here, they do little more than keep us hoping against hope.
You might have heard the film flits between colour and black and white in the most perplexing way. You may also have heard that the director, Lindsay Anderson, claims this is was done for purely economic reasons. Oh - so that makes it okay? I wasted a lot of time because I was under the impression that colour represented one thing, and black and white another; once that idea is abandoned, all that's left is to absorb the overall effect of semi-random alternation. It's like flicking through a scrapbook. This is appropriate, given the disorded nature of the film, and not ENTIRELY a bad thing. The best that can be made of this film is a kind of demented school yearbook, which is certainly better than nothing.