by JLRoberson

Created on: April 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

One of the strangest moments in my film-viewing life was the day I found out Lindsay Anderson directed, of all things, WHALES OF AUGUST. Not that it's a bad film, but it's a bit like finding a Jane Austen novel was in fact written by Jonathan Swift. Anderson is the greatest film satirist of all time, embodying the proper use of the term, which most people use when they mean "parody," all RIGHT? Sorry, bit testy there, ahem...Why do I love Lindsay Anderson, and why is he so ignored? His career included rather disparate work, including TV(as with most TV-based directors, he knew how to do much with little, like Altman or Penn), which he went back to late in his career, as with LOOK BACK IN ANGER with Malcolm McDowell, his frequent and best collaborator, for the BBC in the 80s. This followed his becoming persona non grata in the British film market due to the rise of Thatcher.

This is because, though Anderson's work can be deeply critical of it, his films are steeped deeply in a forgotten language: Marxism. Or rather the marxist critique of how none of us controls our destiny in capitalism. These days, more than then, many could do with a dose of this. Don't worry, I ain't gonna propagandize. But Anderson was the only one to ever use this idea as an effective tool of satire, without it looking like-or being-propaganda. Not a small accomplishment, considering the films are also deeply funny, eerie, lacerating, and sobering. You will not think the same of your job, your upbringing, or your life and where it's going after seeing them.

He was a master of pacing and storytelling; his films are always the BIG kind, like Kubrick or Greenaway, but unlike those very much with his feet in the mud with the rest of us. Anderson's three best-and best-known-films all starred Malcolm McDowell as the capitalist era Candide Michael-Mick-Travis. His first, the legendary "If..."(1968) which now seems almost a vague prophecy of the Columbine massacre(see it and you'll see what I mean), in its presentation of the British Public School as microcosm and perpetuator of the British class system, which you, at the time, could not escape; your roles were set from then for life, and it was only around then this was changing, with great resistance and acrimony(as also presented in Medak & Barnes' THE RULING CLASS).

Ceremony is more important than thought. Remembering arcane trivia about the school in the right order and manner is more important than knowing how to spell. And brilliant performance

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