The opening of O Lucky Man!, a three-hour epic black-comedy on one man's journey through self-discovery in 1970's Britain, is a little odd off the bat. We see some old documentary footage on the making of coffee beans (maybe it's real, maybe not), and it leads up to some coffee farmer in a bad mustache played by Malcolm McDowell getting his hands cut off for thievery. I suppose this is to introduce McDowell's character as a coffee salesman early in the film, but see how it cuts away from this to the rock band led by Alan Price plays, in a studio, the opening title song for the film. This is not just something that will happen once, but as something of a theme, like a rocking Greek chorus (or, perhaps, like Godard's Sympathy for the Devil). But then again, this is the simplest thing about O Lucky Man!
This is a complex nut to crack: on the one hand it's whimsical in its telling of Mick Travis (the same, or a variation, of the Mick Travis from If....), who starts off as a coffee salesman, then has a little bit of a road movie for the first half, then tries to become successful with a big-shot London businessman, and then after a stint in jail... becomes an actor, one supposes, much like McDowell in real life (albeit the only similarities one could see is that he sold coffee and became an actor). But on the other hand with the whimsy and dark comedy, sometimes bizarre (the "Pig-Man" at the laboratory Mick walks in on, the breastfeeding bit, the in-jokes on Clockwork Orange), sometimes political (the torture scene with the fascists), it's also an existential drama of sorts.
Of sorts I mean that you come to this conclusion when the film ends. As O Lucky Man rolls along and we see a story unfold that could only happen in the conflicted 1970s. Lindsay Anderson, by way of his writer and McDowell too, is presenting us with a clear-eyed double edged sword: how does one have a free will and have fun and games with women and rock n roll and be successful in business at the same time? Mick changes by the time he's released from jail, but in those final scenes he's still unsure where his life will go. Anderson's character can do whatever he wants- float along, get rich, fade away, become a star- and all the matters, perhaps, is that he does it with a smile.
McDowell is game from the get-go, and this is perhaps his most charming and (at times) subdued performance. There's little of the menace and devilish-side of his Clockwork Orange, nor that repressed revolutionary in If... Instead here it's a mix of gentlemen and Lady's Man, suave spy and lost soul, and McDowell does any and all the script asks of him with such joy and interest. That's the other curious thing: McDowell makes us really care about this guy Mick Travis, even when he seems to be heading towards real greed "at the top", which makes it easier (or just more fun) to take in awkward and surreal scenes, like when the man jumps from the window and the boss calls for a 15-second moment of silence. As it's a trip through British society as a whole, rich and poor, science and military, music and women, we need someone to bring us along, and McDowell is perfect to do it.
O Lucky Man is a long trek though at three hours, which sometimes passes by like nothing at all and only a couple of times drags (the long scene of the slide-show for the African businessmen is one of these), and it is very much of its time and place (one or two of the songs are dated, though on the whole Price's songs are excellent and even moving). What makes it work for any time period or place past 1970's England is the essential conflicts and contradictions this protagonist faces, and the inventiveness of the film-making. Where else will we see facts about the number of people in the world in prison in text-scrawl during a 5-year transition? It's bold and audacious, and just clever enough to keep us grinning along the way.
This is a complex nut to crack: on the one hand it's whimsical in its telling of Mick Travis (the same, or a variation, of the Mick Travis from If....), who starts off as a coffee salesman, then has a little bit of a road movie for the first half, then tries to become successful with a big-shot London businessman, and then after a stint in jail... becomes an actor, one supposes, much like McDowell in real life (albeit the only similarities one could see is that he sold coffee and became an actor). But on the other hand with the whimsy and dark comedy, sometimes bizarre (the "Pig-Man" at the laboratory Mick walks in on, the breastfeeding bit, the in-jokes on Clockwork Orange), sometimes political (the torture scene with the fascists), it's also an existential drama of sorts.
Of sorts I mean that you come to this conclusion when the film ends. As O Lucky Man rolls along and we see a story unfold that could only happen in the conflicted 1970s. Lindsay Anderson, by way of his writer and McDowell too, is presenting us with a clear-eyed double edged sword: how does one have a free will and have fun and games with women and rock n roll and be successful in business at the same time? Mick changes by the time he's released from jail, but in those final scenes he's still unsure where his life will go. Anderson's character can do whatever he wants- float along, get rich, fade away, become a star- and all the matters, perhaps, is that he does it with a smile.
McDowell is game from the get-go, and this is perhaps his most charming and (at times) subdued performance. There's little of the menace and devilish-side of his Clockwork Orange, nor that repressed revolutionary in If... Instead here it's a mix of gentlemen and Lady's Man, suave spy and lost soul, and McDowell does any and all the script asks of him with such joy and interest. That's the other curious thing: McDowell makes us really care about this guy Mick Travis, even when he seems to be heading towards real greed "at the top", which makes it easier (or just more fun) to take in awkward and surreal scenes, like when the man jumps from the window and the boss calls for a 15-second moment of silence. As it's a trip through British society as a whole, rich and poor, science and military, music and women, we need someone to bring us along, and McDowell is perfect to do it.
O Lucky Man is a long trek though at three hours, which sometimes passes by like nothing at all and only a couple of times drags (the long scene of the slide-show for the African businessmen is one of these), and it is very much of its time and place (one or two of the songs are dated, though on the whole Price's songs are excellent and even moving). What makes it work for any time period or place past 1970's England is the essential conflicts and contradictions this protagonist faces, and the inventiveness of the film-making. Where else will we see facts about the number of people in the world in prison in text-scrawl during a 5-year transition? It's bold and audacious, and just clever enough to keep us grinning along the way.