Britannia Hospital (UK, 1982)
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Starring Leonard Rossiter, Graham Crowden, Joan Plowright, Malcolm McDowell

In the 1950s and 1960s Lindsay Anderson was hailed as a visionary, with If.... receiving the Palme d'Or and widespread critical acclaim. In the 1970s, he was regarded as intelligent but indulgent, with O Lucky Man! dividing critical opinion upon its release. By the 1980s, he was branded obsolete, with Britannia Hospital receiving the worst notices and lowest box office of his career. In hindsight that is a crying shame, since the film is both a return to form from O Lucky Man! and one of the most underrated films of the early-1980s.Britannia Hospital is the third and final instalment of the Mick Travis trilogy, coming nearly nine years after O Lucky Man!. Having been the centrepiece of the last two films, Travis (played by Malcolm McDowell) takes only a peripheral role here - he has risen from schoolboy revolutionary to coffee salesman and filmstar, only to wind up as a muckraking reporter with two stoned technicians. We can see through the trilogy a shift in semi-autobiographical emphasis from Anderson (If....) to McDowell (O Lucky Man!) and finally the nation as a whole.The film's biggest improvement on O Lucky Man! is the quality and integrity of its narrative. O Lucky Man! had so much to do, and so many stories to tell, that it ended up spreading itself too thin to achieve a knockout blow: it resembled pouring a pint of stout onto a very wide saucer. By confining itself to the events of a single day, in a single location, Britannia Hospital is more readily focussed. Even though it looks at many different groups of people, it succeeds as a microcosm of Britain in the same way that If.... did, and manages to be more universal even when it drifts into outright horror or fantasy.Britannia Hospital is also a very unusual and interesting mix of genres. It is on one level a farce, albeit one with a great deal more sophistication and ambition than the Carry On series or the work of Blake Edwards. On another level, it is a political drama, in which the organised and politicised working classes take on both the middle-class managers and the upper class establishment embodied by the private patients and 'HRH'. On a further level, it is a full-blooded horror movie which draws on the traditions of Hammer and grand guignol. Leonard Rossiter's snarling and repressed manager is in stark contrast to Graham Crowden's Rotwang-like mad scientist, in a performance reminiscent of Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood.Britannia Hospital is primarily a lament or requiem of modern Britain. By comparing the state of the nation to that of a hospital constantly facing a crisis, Anderson is lambasting both the old guard and the post-war governments which attempted to brush them aside. Where O Lucky Man! skirted around the notion of champagne socialists and the corruption of politicians and lawmakers, Britannia Hospital launches a vitriolic attack on all sides from all fronts, showing how much the post-war dream has been eroded by self-interest and misjudgement on the part of everyone.In light of Anderson's life-long association with the British Left, you would expect such a thesis to treat the treat union movement with a certain amount of sympathy. But Anderson is merciless, almost to the point of bitterness, in pointing out the duplicity of the union movement with regard to the aims of the people it claims to defend. The film begins with an absurdist vignette of an old man with hypothermia. The ambulance drivers barter their way past the picket line, only for the manto be left on a stretcher in the corridor because both the nurses and porters have clocked off for the night. As Rossiter's name appears he breaths his last; through little more than pedantry and selfishness, the health service is prevented from doing the one thing it was set up to do.Britannia Hospital finds the public and the private co-existing uneasily in the new welfare state. The plight of ordinary patients, for whom the NHS is a matter of life or death, is contrasted with the attitudes of the VIP patients in the private ward, who demand to be treated like royalty. Their number includes a child-eating dictator (a further nod to O Lucky Man!) who has taken up residence in his own private ward. When the catering staff go on strike, matron is forced to offer the private patients oranges for breakfast; her efforts are met with anger, disgust and racial epithets, with one general remarking: "I didn't spend forty years in India to end up with a lot of wogs!".The Britain depicted in Britannia Hospital is a country which is deeply fractured, being torn apart by violence, injustice, inequality and the threat of revolution. But again, Anderson doesn't just fall into the trap of making propaganda, turning out his own private Battleship Potemkin. He characterises Britain as a nation about to turn its back not merely on socialism and the achievements of the welfare state, but on idealism and intelligence as a whole in favour of the simplicity of brute force and tribal warfare. The riot scenes are kinetic and frightening, but they also have a heart-breaking quality, summed up by an image of a protester offering a riot policeman a flower, only to get her head smashed in with his baton.The film also has very little time for the media, with both sets of film crews coming in for a lot of stick. Mick's technicians (one of whom is played by Mark Hamill) are portrayed as sensationalist and lazy: while Mick is crawling around the hospital sticking his neck out to get the footage, they get stoned and laugh themselves stupid watching documentaries about battery hens. The BBC fare no better, coming over as sycophants who fabricate events around Dr. Millar to inflate his ego and make him feel more like a God.Despite Anderson's depression about this state of affairs, the film manages to tackle these pertinent and vital political issues without ever slipping into self-pity. Anderson's sense of righteous anger at what is unfolding is matched by fear on his part for the future of the country his loves, and by a feeling of pathos on the part of the characters. The humour is satirically vainglorious - for instance on the soundtrack, where Alan Price plays 'Rule Britannia' very slowly for maximum irony.There is a comparison between Britannia Hospital and the work of Pink Floyd around the same period, namely The Wall, the subsequent film helmed by Alan Parker, and The Final Cut which was accompanied by a 20-minute short. Britannia Hospital itself shares certain features with The Fletcher Memorial Home: it is a bastion for a bygone age based upon privilege and order, which has since been eroded and rendered all-but-obsolete. Running through all these projects is a theme of missed chances and regret, which will echo through the plight of future generations.Britannia Hospital is also an attack on positivism, showing the march of scientific progress continuing at the expense of mankind. One of the core themes of modernist art is Man feeling lost in a world which is constantly evolving, and which He at best struggles and at worst fails to control. In this case we have Dr. Millar, up to his old tricks again, as the maverick private pioneer being sponsored by (but not controlled by) the state.Where O Lucky Man! felt in places like The Island of Dr. Moreau, the horror elements of Britannia Hospital are a retuning of Frankenstein. It takes a story about humans trying to live forever, leaves in Mary Shelley's warnings about the dangers of progress, and adds disturbing allegories for social engineering. What begins with Travis finding foetuses in jars or freezers full of limbs culminates in a terrifying sequence where his head is grafted onto Millar's monster - it comes to life, only to attack its creator and disintegrate. The gore in these scenes is worthy of anything in Sweeney Todd or Lucio Fulci, coming virtually out of nowhere and being terrifying gruesome.But by far the highlight of Britannia Hospital is its final scene. With a cross-section of society gathered, from royalty to revolutionaries, Millar gives a passionate speech about humanity's need to reinvent itself and the inherent injustices of the status quo. He concludes by revealing 'Genesis', a giant brain which begins to recite from Hamlet before repeating the line 'How like a God'. It's a wonderfully judged paean complimented by creepy special effects and Crowden as his absolute best.There are flaws with Britannia Hospital. Some of the broader, more farcical comedy doesn't work, such as the clichéd sequence of Travis crawling out of the mass of people. And its sexual politics have not dated all that well: the random sex scene with the nurse feels jarring and unnecessary. But as both a plea for intelligence in a time of crisis and a savage social satire, it still holds up both on its own and as a fine conclusion to the trilogy. It's a twisted tale of compassion and caustic humour, and remains a hidden gem of British cinema.

Rating:
Verdict: A twisted triumph

O Lucky Man! (UK, 1973)
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Starring Malcolm McDowell, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe, Graham Crowden

After If.... won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1969, Malcolm McDowell was desperate to work with Lindsay Anderson again. Teaming up with If.... screenwriter David Sherwin, McDowell spent the years in and around A Clockwork Orange churning out draft after draft of a screenplay based loosely on his life. Anderson wanted a film of epic proportions, and what he delivered is at once epic, joyous, frustrating and utterly perplexing.O Lucky Man! is the second instalment of Anderson's Mick Travis trilogy, following If.... and preceding Britannia Hospital. It is not so much a sequel as a companion piece to If...., with this Mick Travis being an everyman figure rather than just the grown-up version of the revolutionary schoolboy. Many of the cast of If.... return playing multiple, completely different roles, and aside from Travis there is little or no attempt made at direct continuity.Where If.... was based on Anderson's experiences at public school, O Lucky Man! is loosely based on the life of Malcolm McDowell, who started out as a coffee salesman before wandering into acting and being cast in If.... almost by accident. The story of Mick Travis has been likened to Candide, Voltaire's sprawling 18th-century epic about an everyman indoctrinated with optimism, who journeys out into the world on a series of exciting and terrifying adventures.As with Candide, O Lucky Man! has a picaresque structure, with an episodic, incredibly rambling storyline which is very difficult to summarise in a paragraph. It begins with Travis working for Imperial Coffee as a salesman and being put in charge of the North-East of England. Following his apparent success he is given Scotland as well, but ends up being interrogated by the military who believe he is a Russian agent. He manages to escape their torture after the base is attacked and evacuated.With no money to speak of, Travis volunteers for a series of experiments led by Dr. Millar (Graham Crowden), who talks about using science to unlock the full potential of mankind. Upon his discovery of a patient who is half-man, half-sheep, Travis flees in fright, hitching a lift to London with Alan Price's band and falling in love with their groupie (Helen Mirren). Having wangled his way into meeting her father, the richest man in the world (Ralph Richardson), Travis becomes his personal assistant, only to be dragged into shady government dealings and imprisoned for fraud. Upon release he is robbed and beaten up by the homeless, leading him to wander into an audition with a film director, played self-referentially by Lindsay Anderson.At this point you would normally have every reason to berate me for giving away the whole plot of the film. But the fact is that O Lucky Man! is very difficult to follow unless you have some prior idea of where it is going. At a slow-moving 183 minutes, it requires a massive amount of patience both to sit through and to tolerate the contrivances and oddities of its plot. There is still substance to be found, but many of its interesting ideas are severely compromised by their execution.As with Candide, O Lucky Man! is at heart a social satire wrapped up in romantic and adventure elements. Like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire was looking to create a work which could satirise society by means of elaborate, whimsical allegory - so elaborate and whimsical that it would slip through the net of church wrath or state censorship. Anderson attempts the same here with less immediate success, although his intentions are noble and his film has dated somewhat better than other contemporary satires, if only because its scope and themes are so universal.O Lucky Man! is a satire of commercialism and ambition in a capitalist society. Travis begins the film guided by optimism, ambition and his willingness to do anything to get rich. Even before his success with Imperial Coffee, he seems to have totally abandoned his revolutionary principles, acknowledging either through maturity or base self-interest that the only way to make it in life is to fake it. Anderson's re-tuning of the character reflects both the selling-out of many of his left-wing comrades and Britain as a whole, which was slowly eroding or reversing its post-war achievements (something he would return to in Britannia Hospital).The film is also about luck, with most of Travis' adventures coming about mostly from being in the right place at the right time. His success in the North-East comes largely from networking with the locals in a crowded showing of a porn film. When interrogated by the army, he begins to pretend that he is Russian to get it over with, and only escapes because the base is bombed. He becomes Sir James' assistant not because he has the skills or experience, but because he knew his daughter and just happened to be there when Professor Stewart (Crowden) committed suicide. "It's not what you know, it's who you know" may be a trite point to make, but Anderson plays it through with relish to show how hollow capitalist meritocracy can be.As perfectly valid and interesting as these points may be, they often get misplaced or buried amongst the increasingly ridiculous series of events. Travis is supposed to be an everyman and yet his experiences become so fantastical that even when the allegory is played for obvious effect, they never quite tap into the nub of the issues. One could argue that this was done out of respect for the audience, with Anderson believing they could fill in the blanks rather than needing to be lectured. But there is too little for us to grip onto in our bid to decode the most esoteric elements, and at its worst the film resembles Sleeper, having to constantly be outlandish or wacky to keep things moving forward.The tone of O Lucky Man! lurches around uncontrollably. The scenes in Dr. Millar's institute are played straight to maximise the horror, with certain scenes resembling H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. But other scenes are almost parodies of Anderson's earlier work - the scene where Travis attempts to coax Mrs. Richards out of committing suicide is a total piss-take of kitchen-sink dialogue. Mrs. Richards is played by Rachael Roberts, star of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life, who would tragically take her own life in 1980.The recurrence of cast members like Graham Crowden, Rachael Roberts and Arthur Lowe give the impression that O Lucky Man! was partly or wholly made to get the old gang back together. Anderson was less confident that he had been on If.... and parts of the film feel that he was making it up as he went along (albeit not without success). Alan Price's band were incorporated into the film as a modern-day Greek chorus because Anderson had wanted to make a documentary about them but couldn't afford the licensing costs.On top of all that, O Lucky Man! is littered with moments which are so completely out of left field that you have to pinch yourself. The strangest of these comes at Travis' trial when the judge goes back into his chambers, strips off to reveal next to nothing under his gown and is roundly whipped by the usher. Anderson could be making a point about public school habits or sexual perversity behind closed doors. But it does feel like we've wandered into the Monty Python sketch where the two judges strip off while talking about "waggling wigs" and "banging gavels".O Lucky Man! is a sprawling and bizarre follow-up from Anderson, which confuses as much as it stimulates or enthrals. McDowell is excellent in the lead, giving us some form of a charismatic anchor for the story as it floats on increasingly choppy waters. Like The Bed-Sitting Room before it, it has a number of interesting and relevant ideas which are let down by their peculiar execution, and both films require immense patience to be fulfilling. It's massively and tragically flawed, but somehow still compelling.

Rating:
Verdict: Sprawing but somewhat satisfying

Unknown (USA/ Germany, 2011)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Bruno Ganz

It's not uncommon for actors to have a second, very different career after their initial period of stardom has been and gone. Malcolm McDowell went from the symbol of anarchic youth in If.... and A Clockwork Orange to the man who killed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. Leslie Nielsen began as a middling melodrama actor and ended up as a comedy icon through the Naked Gun series. And Richard Attenborough started out as Pinkie Brown and ended up as Chris Cringle.

Unknown begins where Taken left off in confirming Liam Neeson's new-found status as the king of the upmarket B-movie. With an interesting central conceit and a flashy visual style, it has the potential to be a rip-roaring, nuts-and-bolts action thriller. But despite Neeson's solid central performance and a couple of decent scenes, the film is undone by its derivative nature and ends up being nothing more than a bit dull.At the centre of Unknown there is a reasonably intriguing idea which has been a staple of thrillers and science fiction for many years. Feeling like the whole world is conspiring against you, and that you are the only sane person left alive, can be found in everything from Philip K. Dick to Eugene Ionesco. It's an appealing idea in cinema because it allows an audience to connect with the central protagonist early on, and creates an air of intrigue which pulls us into the central story.In particular, Unknown owes a big debt to two entries in this loose conspiracy mould. The first is The Lady Vanishes, one of Alfred Hitchcock's last films made in England. In it a young woman boards a train with an elderly lady and goes to sleep, only to find that said lady has disappeared and none of the other passengers remember anyone of her description being on the train.The other close comparison is Frantic, one of Roman Polanski's lighter and frothier efforts in which Harrison Ford's wife disappears in the centre of Paris and the authorities are unwilling to help him find her. In both cases the stories revolve around ordinary people discovering hidden dealings with spies which place them into some kind of mortal danger. And in the case of Frantic, there are direct crossovers in the plot points involving mysterious women and misplaced briefcases.Like both of these films, Unknown hinges on whether or not the central performance is commanding and entertaining enough to keep us interested. And on this level at least, it works. Liam Neeson may be no Harrison Ford, but he has sufficient screen presence to hold an audience's gaze and the emotional range to convey the turmoil of the central character. Much of our attention in the early section of the film is focussed on him adjusting to his status as a man in limbo; not only are his circumstances believable, but his reactions are as well.These early sections find Dr. Martin Harris wondering whether it is possible that every aspect of his life as he perceives it may not actually exist. Because the character does not remember much that happened before the accident, we are left uncertain as to when the illusion of his life would have been created (if indeed it has been created). It is fruitless to speculate as to what happens before his plane lands, since all we have are his conflicted memories and the events which play out before us.As the film rolls on it has to make a number of decisions about which version of reality is true and the reasoning behind it. And it is here that Unknown begins to come apart as its plot and execution become increasingly derivative. In a scene in a multi-story car park, the script dithers over the exact nature of a big twist, borrowing heavily from The Manchurian Candidate and especially the Bourne series. The 'revelation' of Martin Harris' identity is so akin to that in The Bourne Ultimatum that the scripts virtually match up: you almost expect Frank Langella to lean in like Albert Finney and say: "Will you commit to this programme?".Then there are the plot holes to consider. At the beginning of the film we are led to believe that Martin Harris is an ordinary guy in a good marriage - who, as it turns out, also has knowledge of martial arts, explosives and semi-automatic weapons. The question is always how much the character really remembers, and even early on there are questions as to whether someone so seemingly normal could fight or use weapons that well. But after the car park scene all hell breaks loose, with the clunky twist serving as the excuse to turn his character into an all-out invincible action hero.There are other plot holes too. In at least two scenes Liam Neeson gives someone all the money he has in exchange for their help - and yet he always has enough left to make a phone call or to offer to somebody else. The police are conspicuously absent as he leaves an increasing trail of destruction behind him, with long lulls in the film in-between the various attacks by assassins or hired goons. Everything about the Bourne series which solved these problems are lacking in Unknown, and the more often they occur the less plausible it becomes.

The central problem with Unknown is that in the end, it is a little too ordinary. In every aspect of its execution, it is just about passable or almost good enough, but it lacks the sparkle or slight panache to make it memorable. Even in its most frenetic moments, with Neeson punching or killing everyone in sight or several floors of a hotel being blown up, you sit there just a bit bored and increasingly less bothered about what happened beforehand.Like a lot of thrillers, the film ends up relying on a Basil Exposition character to wander in from time to time and nudge the plot along. In this case we have Bruno Ganz, who fills the Michael Redgrave role from The Lady Vanishes, as the man of ill-repute who trusts our hero as much out of curiosity as personal gain. Ganz does the best he can and his scenes are among the most likeable in the film. But after Frank Langella arrives the two are in competition for the role; when they meet it is as much a fight to explain what will happen next as it is about serving their characters.Unknown might have had more chance of being memorable had the action sequences been well-executed. But sadly this is not to be, with even the biggest set-pieces falling short. The film is shot by Flavio Labiano, who also shot the compelling thriller Timecrimes, but the glossy visuals are rendered useless by the bad use of shaky-cam and the hackery of Jaume Collet-Serra. The same stunts involving cars spinning and people being hit by crowbars are repeated almost literally ad nauseum.In terms of the performances around Neeson and Ganz, they are a complete mixed bag. Diane Kruger, fresh from Inglourious Basterds, does a pretty good job as Gina; her character feels savvy and quite rounded, and we enjoy her relationship with Harris as the film develops. But Sebastian Koch, who was great in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, gets precious little to work with, and neither does 'the other Martin Harris' played by Aidan Quinn. As for January Jones, her role consists of little more than turning around mysteriously, glancing into middle distance or demonstrating that she looks good in a backless dress.
Unknown is a disappointingly dull and derivative thriller made memorable only by the performance of Liam Neeson. It has neither the light-hearted, playful thrills of Frantic nor the proficient construction of The Lady Vanishes. It scores over Taken in its depiction of foreigners as something other than blatant stereotypes, and there are individual moments which may raise an eyebrow or a giggle. But otherwise there's very little in Unknown which is surprising, enticing or worth remembering.

Rating:
Verdict: Initially promising but ultimately pedestrian

If.... (UK, 1968)
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Starring Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, Arthur Lowe

In selecting the greatest high school movie of all time, there are a number of different 'schools' from which to choose. We have the light-hearted nostalgia of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off; the awkward indie spirit of Napoleon Dynamite and Grosse Point Blank; the adolescent gross-out of Porky's and American Pie; and the twisted one-upmanship of Carrie and Heathers.But while all of these entries are valid and have their own merits (even Porky's), they cannot hold a candle to the overall winner: a film which combines earthy black comedy with artistic flights of fantasy, and savage satire of the establishment with personal quandaries about sex, servitude, romance and rebellion. And, as a bonus, it is the film which launched the career of Malcolm McDowell. The film is If...., the director is Lindsay Anderson, and the result is one of the greatest films of the 1960s.If.... might seem an odd choice for the greatest ever high school film when we consider the kind of schooling on which it focuses. Set in the fictional College School deep in the conservative heartlands of 1960s England, it explores the kind of education and school system which the vast majority of us will never have to endure. It's the kind of school that would serve as an ideal backdrop for a story like Goodbye Mr. Chips or The Browning Version: while capable of producing fine drama, it doesn't smack of rebellion, let alone revolution.Fortunately, If.... has both qualities in spades, and it captures all the essential elements of adolescence that have been replicated in often putrid detail by its American progeny. It manages to be aware of the intelligence and sophistication of public school while overtly and sarcastically mocking everything it stands for. The very title is an act of thinly-veiled defiance: If... is a famous poem by the staunchly patriotic Rudyard Kipling, with the extra '.' in the ellipsis being an impudent revision of the way of life it encapsulates. The final scenes in particular give new meaning to the poem's penultimate line: "Yours is the earth, and everything that's in it."Like many films of the counter-cultural period, If.... depicts the relationship between the older and younger generations as being one of bitter opposition. The older generation, embodied by the masters, parents and prefects, are entrenched in the pre-war, imperial mindset with an emphasis on serving one's country and knowing one's place. The younger boys, including Mick Travis, feel no attachment to these values, regarding them as irrelevant, out-dated, stuffy and dull.But while there is this broad divide in outlooks between the generations, there are instances of crossover on both sides. Some of the teachers harbour relatively subversive thoughts and attempt to convey them, such as Graham Crowden's history teacher who cycles right into the classroom and then proceeds to outline his own peculiar take on key historical events. The headmaster is less successful in this, calling Travis into his office and repeating the phrase "I understand" to a point of desperation.Just as not all of the teachers are straightforwardly stuffy and backward, so not all the students in If.... are didactic flag-wavers. The students who rebel are not politically motivated like their counterparts in Zabriskie Point; in the words of the headmaster, "You're not rebels. That would be too easy." Travis may have posters of Lenin and Che Guevara on his wall, but his monologues are more concerned with the beauty of freedom, and the need to live a truly meaningful and joyous life even in the shadow of a possible nuclear holocaust. He rejects and flouts all forms of authority, despising the very essence of anything which inhibits him from free expression and the passionate act of being himself.One aspect of free expression on which If.... focuses is sexual liberation. In one of the film's more surreal segments, Travis and one of his friends steal a motorbike and drive some distance to a roadside café. Once there, they order coffee, Travis plays some classical music on the jukebox and, without any notice or questions asked, begins an affair with the waitress. In other section, a young boy spots Wallace training on the parallel bars, and they develop a homoerotic relationship. Anderson may not be encouraging free love in the now-clichéd manner of hippie movies, but he uses these scenes to reinforce his point about needing a society shaped by the people, rather than the other way around.If.... is Anderson's stand against the traditional values of England - everything from duty and propriety to the barmy traditions of private clubs. The film is part of his continued attempt to destroy the post-war malaise of British cinema, just as his political heroes had tried to destroy it through guns and social democracy. Throughout the film we see bastions of the community attempting to drill their students with values of 'honour', 'duty' and 'fighting the good fight', only for these ideas to crumble into absurdity and insignificance when applied.Two examples perfectly illustrate this point. The first comes at the three-quarter mark, where the chaplain gives a sermon on fighting for Christ, and how desertion or failure to fulfil duty is the greatest and most unforgivable of sins. But less than ten minutes later, he is cornered by Malcolm McDowell during the war games and becomes a quivering coward, terrified by the prospect of there being real bullets in Travis' gun. At the end of the film a visiting General gives a speech about how "the cynics" have nothing to replace the old values which they criticise. But what starts as convincing soon descends into the absurd: he speaks about discipline, only for his public to stumble into the aisles in blind panic while the stage beneath him goes up in flames.The film is built around the central performance of Malcolm McDowell, who is little short of magnificent. It's a very close rival for his work in A Clockwork Orange, which could be described as the more cynical cousin of this film. Stanley Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson may direct in totally different ways, but they both use McDowell superbly, utilising those huge, puppy-dog eyes, perfect hair, curled lips and upstart demeanour. And then there is the voice, which is note-perfect when delivering his poetic musings and savage put-downs to the uptight prefects.There is a further comparison with Kubrick in the idea of discipline and degradation being used by the establishment in a manner which ultimately destroys it. The brutal scene of Travis being caned repeatedly in the gym is like an artier, moodier version of the boot camp scenes in Full Metal Jacket. Travis may not take on the psychotic quality of Private Pile, but his experience of brutality makes him more determined than ever to fight against the system and reclaim his identity.The visuals of If.... are distinctive in their combination of colour and monochrome cinematography. When the film was first released, people read into the black-and-white sections as having some deeper artistic meaning, with a variety of theories being posited. In fact, these sections exist for the simple reason that Anderson ran out of money - or, as in the chapels scenes, it was quicker and easier to light for monochrome on a tight production schedule. Whichever is the more true, the film benefits from its unique look - it's a happy accident which reinforces the artistic and personal tone even if it doesn't bring much in the way of meaning.If.... remains as incendiary and as perfectly formed as it was over 40 years ago. Anderson's masterful yet understated direction gifts us with a series of properly believable performances, and his balanced of the natural and the surreal is effortless, particularly in the final shootout. While the revolutionary zeal and optimism surrounding it have long since faded, the film remains both a truthful product of its time and a work of timeless genius. It is an extraordinary piece of British cinema and is essential viewing.

Rating:
Verdict: Magn-IF....-icent