Every once in a while, you bump into movie that leaves any attempt to rationalize it completely futile.
Having just finished Lindsay Anderson's "If..." I'm still in an intellectual digestion phase. And to be quite honest, a second service didn't even help. I can say I was genuinely shocked but not appalled and somewhat absorbed by its own moral detachment, even hooked to its total amorality.
Whatever you can think of the movie, the least that can be said is that it's quite unique, and for someone who uses movies to contemplate society, "If...", Golden Palm winner of 1969 is quite a challenge. So, where to start?
A look at the timing. 1968. Europe. Schools. It doesn't take a history major to guess how deeply rooted the film is in its historical context and social environment, it's a more cynical vision than "Blow-Up" where a young British man was basically looking for a ghost. The protagonists here are pupils in an English public boarding school, whose ages vary from 12 to 18, the newcomers undergo the hazing of the elder ones and some harassment from adults, the sixth-formers enjoy their position of authority; expressing it in the most sordid fashion while a minority rebels against the rules, proudly brandished by the headmaster and the teachers.
That the film takes place in one of the most civilized countries of the world and most ancient democracies speaks for itself. There's always something rotten in the zealous attachment to traditions and discipline when they alienate you from the practical teaching of positive values. There are basically three categories of people in the school: bullies, victims and rebels who fall in both categories and highlight the fact that you always reap what you sowed. The ending of "If..." whether meant as a warning or a surreal fantasy ironically finds stronger resonance in today's context where young people commit acts of violence in the name of abstract angers, just for the kicks of exercising violence and purging the world from a stank they don't realize they're part of it, or maybe they do.
Speaking for myself, I was never a rebel to begin with, I could never relate to rebellion and always took discipline as a structuring necessity. A speech before the climax explains that to build a real man, capable to exercise his own power, he must learn obedience first, it's a matter of give and take. But there's an arithmetic dissonance: some give just too much of themselves, others can only take, and a few took so much they end up giving a taste of their own medicine and it isn't pleasant. I never was a rebel because I think the real rebellion is within yourself first, one must get rid of his own dogmas and find his own truth, but even that is a double-edged sword because it depends on your initial upbringing.
Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is one of these rebels without a cause, this slice of youth that took the extreme way to express his refusal to submit to the world. He strikes first as a romantic but the signs don't fool us: posters of Che Guevara and Mao in the dorm, the haunting theme of "Sanctus" shows his fascination for the revolution. His nickname Guy Fawkes foreshadows his existential action, but while the camera does have a fascination for him as a subject, his actions are never given any intellectual weight, they're mostly shown through his quest for true, genuine and raw emotions: stealing a motorbike, playing erotic fight with a Girl he just met and one thing leading to another, starting to use real weapons against his vision of autocratic alienation. An anarchist, maybe?
We're never sure how the portrayal of the life going in the college, shown with a gritty documentary-like realism, is able to make us empathize with him and his friends. Are they trying to demolish the order or reverse it? Do they have any political ambition? Is destruction a means or an end? It's left to the viewer, torn between moments of social introspections and other of pure realism. The film is rather graphic showing difficult scenes where kids are being bullied and tormented in a way that would make today's audience cringe, but maybe the treatment in the end plays like an euthanasia against a society whose cancer is just a sort of inner decadence, when you believe you're in your total right, you make yourself enemies who'd believe the same, it's one extreme for another, and in-between, there can only be victims.
The film was certainly admired for its creative use of black and white and color, its profusion of vulgarity and depravation, its total non-commitment to any narrative rule. While seeming to have a common thread, the film is a contradiction by itself as if it tired to capture the putrefying effect of generation gaps and dated notions. Being a teacher for a few months, I notice many students, some good ones, rebel for no other reason that they enjoy it. I punish them but sometimes I secretly envy them. Lastly I was thinking of that pupil who's in the midst of an adolescence crisis and that I have a sort of difficult relationship with, I thought of "Elephant" and if that kid ever had such impulses, I might be on the top of his shooting list.
I'm going too far in my presumption, but if Lindsay Anderson's film ever proved something is that "if..." is a legitimate question and just because you don't have definite answers, it's worth asking them. The film might be chaotic, anarchic, bizarre and puzzling, it does have that truth about youth, they'll always behave that way even in the most civilized countries. If the ending is too far-fetched, it's because cinema is here to push the boundaries of realism and invite us to consider the weirdest scenarios. And within its own bizarreness, the ending seemed plausible.
Having just finished Lindsay Anderson's "If..." I'm still in an intellectual digestion phase. And to be quite honest, a second service didn't even help. I can say I was genuinely shocked but not appalled and somewhat absorbed by its own moral detachment, even hooked to its total amorality.
Whatever you can think of the movie, the least that can be said is that it's quite unique, and for someone who uses movies to contemplate society, "If...", Golden Palm winner of 1969 is quite a challenge. So, where to start?
A look at the timing. 1968. Europe. Schools. It doesn't take a history major to guess how deeply rooted the film is in its historical context and social environment, it's a more cynical vision than "Blow-Up" where a young British man was basically looking for a ghost. The protagonists here are pupils in an English public boarding school, whose ages vary from 12 to 18, the newcomers undergo the hazing of the elder ones and some harassment from adults, the sixth-formers enjoy their position of authority; expressing it in the most sordid fashion while a minority rebels against the rules, proudly brandished by the headmaster and the teachers.
That the film takes place in one of the most civilized countries of the world and most ancient democracies speaks for itself. There's always something rotten in the zealous attachment to traditions and discipline when they alienate you from the practical teaching of positive values. There are basically three categories of people in the school: bullies, victims and rebels who fall in both categories and highlight the fact that you always reap what you sowed. The ending of "If..." whether meant as a warning or a surreal fantasy ironically finds stronger resonance in today's context where young people commit acts of violence in the name of abstract angers, just for the kicks of exercising violence and purging the world from a stank they don't realize they're part of it, or maybe they do.
Speaking for myself, I was never a rebel to begin with, I could never relate to rebellion and always took discipline as a structuring necessity. A speech before the climax explains that to build a real man, capable to exercise his own power, he must learn obedience first, it's a matter of give and take. But there's an arithmetic dissonance: some give just too much of themselves, others can only take, and a few took so much they end up giving a taste of their own medicine and it isn't pleasant. I never was a rebel because I think the real rebellion is within yourself first, one must get rid of his own dogmas and find his own truth, but even that is a double-edged sword because it depends on your initial upbringing.
Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is one of these rebels without a cause, this slice of youth that took the extreme way to express his refusal to submit to the world. He strikes first as a romantic but the signs don't fool us: posters of Che Guevara and Mao in the dorm, the haunting theme of "Sanctus" shows his fascination for the revolution. His nickname Guy Fawkes foreshadows his existential action, but while the camera does have a fascination for him as a subject, his actions are never given any intellectual weight, they're mostly shown through his quest for true, genuine and raw emotions: stealing a motorbike, playing erotic fight with a Girl he just met and one thing leading to another, starting to use real weapons against his vision of autocratic alienation. An anarchist, maybe?
We're never sure how the portrayal of the life going in the college, shown with a gritty documentary-like realism, is able to make us empathize with him and his friends. Are they trying to demolish the order or reverse it? Do they have any political ambition? Is destruction a means or an end? It's left to the viewer, torn between moments of social introspections and other of pure realism. The film is rather graphic showing difficult scenes where kids are being bullied and tormented in a way that would make today's audience cringe, but maybe the treatment in the end plays like an euthanasia against a society whose cancer is just a sort of inner decadence, when you believe you're in your total right, you make yourself enemies who'd believe the same, it's one extreme for another, and in-between, there can only be victims.
The film was certainly admired for its creative use of black and white and color, its profusion of vulgarity and depravation, its total non-commitment to any narrative rule. While seeming to have a common thread, the film is a contradiction by itself as if it tired to capture the putrefying effect of generation gaps and dated notions. Being a teacher for a few months, I notice many students, some good ones, rebel for no other reason that they enjoy it. I punish them but sometimes I secretly envy them. Lastly I was thinking of that pupil who's in the midst of an adolescence crisis and that I have a sort of difficult relationship with, I thought of "Elephant" and if that kid ever had such impulses, I might be on the top of his shooting list.
I'm going too far in my presumption, but if Lindsay Anderson's film ever proved something is that "if..." is a legitimate question and just because you don't have definite answers, it's worth asking them. The film might be chaotic, anarchic, bizarre and puzzling, it does have that truth about youth, they'll always behave that way even in the most civilized countries. If the ending is too far-fetched, it's because cinema is here to push the boundaries of realism and invite us to consider the weirdest scenarios. And within its own bizarreness, the ending seemed plausible.