A flawed film, but still interesting and worth watching.
Faults first. The film is adapted from a play and it shows. Things that the audience will accept in the theatre don't work in the cinema- the absence of a plot; the emphasis and dependence on words- all of the characters are powerfully- magnificently- eloquent, even when it contradicts their personae; the fact that the actors are all obviously too old for the characters they play- actors in their thirties playing people in their late teens or early twenties.
Paradoxically, some of the most interesting aspects of the film derive from those flaws- there is little pretence of realism, so Malcolm Scrawdyke's speech to his (three) followers inspires invisible masses to frenzied cheers, drably realistic townscapes have unrealistic sound-backgrounds, fantasies of revenge and persecution are deliberately played as comic and unnatural grotesqueries, so we can see Scrawdyke as potentially dangerous as well as genuinely comic while remaining detached. Only the attack on Anne at the end is realistically- and deliberately nastily- depicted. The other male characters are unnatural but convincing- fine acting makes us suspend our disbelief and accept these absurd beings as real in the film. Indeed, Dennis Nipple- played by David Warner- moves from a two-dimensional autistic parody to a moral core in the film as the only one who can distinguish between reality and fantasy, games and crime, and who has to be "tried" and "killed" because he can accept his death by ostracism and still know there is a world elsewhere he can go to. He is Malcolm's rival as a rhetorician and so must go.
In short, if you look for the conventional virtues of a film, you will be disappointed, but if you are willing to accept the unexpected you will find qualities not many films have, qualities worth watching for and enjoying.
Faults first. The film is adapted from a play and it shows. Things that the audience will accept in the theatre don't work in the cinema- the absence of a plot; the emphasis and dependence on words- all of the characters are powerfully- magnificently- eloquent, even when it contradicts their personae; the fact that the actors are all obviously too old for the characters they play- actors in their thirties playing people in their late teens or early twenties.
Paradoxically, some of the most interesting aspects of the film derive from those flaws- there is little pretence of realism, so Malcolm Scrawdyke's speech to his (three) followers inspires invisible masses to frenzied cheers, drably realistic townscapes have unrealistic sound-backgrounds, fantasies of revenge and persecution are deliberately played as comic and unnatural grotesqueries, so we can see Scrawdyke as potentially dangerous as well as genuinely comic while remaining detached. Only the attack on Anne at the end is realistically- and deliberately nastily- depicted. The other male characters are unnatural but convincing- fine acting makes us suspend our disbelief and accept these absurd beings as real in the film. Indeed, Dennis Nipple- played by David Warner- moves from a two-dimensional autistic parody to a moral core in the film as the only one who can distinguish between reality and fantasy, games and crime, and who has to be "tried" and "killed" because he can accept his death by ostracism and still know there is a world elsewhere he can go to. He is Malcolm's rival as a rhetorician and so must go.
In short, if you look for the conventional virtues of a film, you will be disappointed, but if you are willing to accept the unexpected you will find qualities not many films have, qualities worth watching for and enjoying.