I didn't quite know what dystopian meant until I read it years ago in a review of "A Clockwork Orange" and looked it up.
Dystopian: relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad.
It applies equally to Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man!" although it is set in contemporary Britain circa 1973. The film seemed to draw a lot of energy from Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" mainly through Malcolm McDowell's performance – he even gets beaten up by homeless people in both movies.
In "O Lucky Man!" he plays Mick Travis, a naïve young coffee salesman who is sent to the four corners of Britain uncovering everything the filmmakers thought was wrong with the country and society in general.
Viewed 45 years later "O Lucky Man!" seems a pretty heavy-handed satire, especially the sequences involving Sir James Burgess (Ralph Richardson), the Africans and Honey. Most of the characters climb onto their soapbox at one time or another.
Lindsay Anderson's sense of satire often ran to explosions or mowing people down if you remember the ending of "If". But it was the 70's and self-indulgent movies were de rigueur, however based on length alone, this one would have to take the cake. It's long, really long, and to emphasise the fact, some of the actors reappear a number of times as different characters, the way a marching band will come around again and again in a long parade.
Although the British establishment was in director Lindsay Anderson's sights, other things were happening in the 70's to make any viewpoint fuzzy: Vietnam, drugs, hippies, strikes, left wing militants, Watergate and disillusionment with institutions everywhere.
To show how much the 70's were playing with the filmmaker's heads, the sanest, calmest and most enlightened group in the film are the members of the rock band whose song lyrics punctuate proceedings every now and then.
"O Lucky Man!" is possibly a hard one to sit through these days, but as an example of the way society was gazing into its navel in the 1970's, it's fascinating.
Dystopian: relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad.
It applies equally to Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man!" although it is set in contemporary Britain circa 1973. The film seemed to draw a lot of energy from Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" mainly through Malcolm McDowell's performance – he even gets beaten up by homeless people in both movies.
In "O Lucky Man!" he plays Mick Travis, a naïve young coffee salesman who is sent to the four corners of Britain uncovering everything the filmmakers thought was wrong with the country and society in general.
Viewed 45 years later "O Lucky Man!" seems a pretty heavy-handed satire, especially the sequences involving Sir James Burgess (Ralph Richardson), the Africans and Honey. Most of the characters climb onto their soapbox at one time or another.
Lindsay Anderson's sense of satire often ran to explosions or mowing people down if you remember the ending of "If". But it was the 70's and self-indulgent movies were de rigueur, however based on length alone, this one would have to take the cake. It's long, really long, and to emphasise the fact, some of the actors reappear a number of times as different characters, the way a marching band will come around again and again in a long parade.
Although the British establishment was in director Lindsay Anderson's sights, other things were happening in the 70's to make any viewpoint fuzzy: Vietnam, drugs, hippies, strikes, left wing militants, Watergate and disillusionment with institutions everywhere.
To show how much the 70's were playing with the filmmaker's heads, the sanest, calmest and most enlightened group in the film are the members of the rock band whose song lyrics punctuate proceedings every now and then.
"O Lucky Man!" is possibly a hard one to sit through these days, but as an example of the way society was gazing into its navel in the 1970's, it's fascinating.