Movie: O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973)
When Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) walks past graffiti exclaiming "Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals", O Lucky Man! suddenly clicks as a socialist feature-length version of "the goy's teeth" scene - basically a short moral parable set to Jimi Hendrix - in A Serious Man. The Coens tell of a Jewish dentist who finds potentially religious symbols inscripted on the back of one of his secular patient's teeth. "Help me, save me" they supposedly read, leading the good doctor to many sleepless nights, digging through Jewish tomes trying to find out whether God communicates to him, and if so how. In his despairing quest for answers he eventually seeks out Rabbi Nachtner, hoping he might know if "Hashem" speaks to him through the "Torah or the Caballah". The Rabbi's answer is simple: "The teeth, we don't know. A sigh from Hashem? Don't know. Helping others? Couldn't hurt." There is a subset of leftists who seem to treat socialism as a theoretical exercise whose main aim is the expression of Marx and Lenin's thoughts, rather than as a practical framework for materially improving people's lives. Unsurprisingly that often comes with an irony-poisoned worldview requiring to see every single aspect of mainstream society as a fundamentally stupid sham that only a select few comrades can see through.
For over two hours O Lucky Man! presents itself as an intellectualised satire of capitalism and contemporary British society, following Mick, a young coffee salesman whose simple charms and singleminded dedication to proftt fuel his career in the company, and eventually open doors into the even greater riches of the military-industrial complex. The many signifiers of high-minded artistry and postmodern sensibilities (references to Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange, a rock band let by The Animals' Alan Price serving as a Greek chorus commenting on the action until it suddenly finds itself part of the plot, silent film interludes, actors playing multiple roles, surrealist ambigous imagery) can't conceal that many off its shots are incoherent and off-target. The 'surprising' promiscuity of a plain looking hotel hostess does not represent the dark underbelly of British commonality, no matter how hard you try. The use of blackface does not need to be inherently racist (see Assa, and Tropic Thunder), but it definitely is when used to present a white English actor as the president of a fictional African country, voluntarily and enthusiastically selling off his land to the British government. A scene early in the movie of the company manager rambling in front of a major poster of a stereotypical African farm lady joyously carrying coffee beans over her head makes a similar point much better and funnier. Detours to a military site and a hospital have some similarly effective and funny moments, but overstay their welcome without really making explicit what they are actually criticising, turning O Lucky Man! into a social satire that disdains instutions that save and kill lives equally, because its mainly offended by the supposedly bourgeois attittudes governing them.
In one of the sharper scenes, Mick becomes a patsy. He is arrested for the corrupt dealings between a British industrialist and the aforementioned African dictator, but while justice is served the deal still gets through. After five years in jail, he gets out a reformed man and the film suddenly becomes much more interesting, making an aesthetic turn for social realism. We now see the world as it is, rather than as a stylised intellectual concept. The film looks unflinchingly at the poverty in London's East End where the better off try to make ends meet in crammed one-room apartments, while the truly miserable live on the street hoping that the kind food truck lady will have enough for all. Mick gets accidentally recruited to stop a single mom from killing herself and starts quoting Shakespeare, Thomas Payne and other great Britsh writers of renown, finding that their inspirational eloquence doesn't bring any food to the table. "Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals" appears in the next scene, indicating that the film might be self-aware. Even so, it still takes three hours to achieve what "The goy's teeth" managed in seven minutes, but it eventually leads to a rather moving ending that works much better in practice than you'd expect on paper. Ultimately, we are all just simple people trying to do our best.
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