Happy to have seen O Lucky Man! again soon after If. . . Both came recommended by my sister Linda back in the 1970s. Both are now availble on DVD and worth tracking down. I'd seen blurrier video versions in the 1980s, but not since the end of the Cold War.
Many of the same actors percolate from If... to O Lucky Man! and play multiple roles. Malcolm McDowell keeps the name Mick Travis, though he is a different man, more happy-go-lucky in the cruel, cruel, occasionally wonderful world as seen through the wandering, wondering skeptical eyes of McDowell and Lindsay Anderson. Blend together Voltaire, William Blake, Tom Paine, John Dos Passos, Ian Fleming, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Luis Buñuel, The Kinks and Pink Floyd and presto, you get a sense of the kaleidoscopic vision of O Lucky Man!
I don't like to "rate" much, but that said, this has got to be in the top five percent of English language films in my book.
It's nothing less than a true attempt at exposing and understanding modern life in all its absurdities, complexities and banal evils through the scrim of capitalist society, the most efficient form -- so far -- of plundering the planet and the majority of people living on it. All with a story line that, after the disappearance of "Oswald," takes Mick Travis North and South, West and East, though not in that order, initally as a coffee salesman.
O Lucky Man! seems even more chilling in the 21st century than it did in the 20th, despite its comic and satirical elements.
I am reminded of how weird things are getting every time I retrieve a milk container for my first cup of coffee in the morning: "Our farms," the Horizon "leaping cow" Organic LOWFAT MILK carton explains, "produced this milk without antibiotics, added hormones, pesticides or cloning." God, let's hope so.
Today's Rune: Possessions.
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