O Lucky Man! (1973)

Simply Perfect

A Major Disappointment

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

To refer to this 3 hour monstrosity as simply "self-indulgent" would be an understatement of breathtaking proportions. I write this brief review as a warning, and nothing more. To waste time critiquing its many pointless scenes would be useless, since many are just forgettable. But what we have here is a very talented cast wasting our time and theirs with several useless, random scenes barely intertwined into a dated critique of capitalism. And don't believe what you've heard about the music, either. Even that is bad. The basic plot synopsis that you will read on this site and in many film review books covers only a small fraction of what this film actually contains. It plays like a series of twenty minute short films, held together only by McDowell, and the little rock band. As good as McDowell is (and he acts well here too) even he can't sustain your interest. I mean this film is BAD. About the only other positive aspect of this is a young Helen Mirren who looks kind of like Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. That's as good of a compliment I can come up with. That's how bad this is. Don't see it! 3 stars is all I can muster. Only for McDowell and Mirren.The Hound.

My somewhat slow, long-term project of revisiting films of my youth that impacted me took me back to that staple of campus films societies at Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1970's, O Lucky Man!, where I first saw it. Unfortunately, it has not dated well, at least in my opinion. (I know, I used to have a romanticized memory of the movie in my head as well.) Seeing it again after many, many more years of film-viewing I see this movie as being too long by at least a third. I think it could have really benefited with stricter editing choices and a firmer hand on the story -- which is ironic since Lindsay Anderson himself allegedly kept telling Malcolm McDowell (and presumably the crew) that they needed to do that very same thing. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious -- and normally I'm a sucker for an ambitious "failure," ESPECIALLY by Hollywood standards -- but they lost the story for some of the anti-establishment points they were trying to make way too inconsistently to hold focus or interest. There are too many other reasons for falling short to mention here, but not the least of them is that it features the high-water mark of the career of Malcolm McDowell who was at the peak of his international fame between the two Lindsay Anderson films and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (although also very good later in Time After Time). Once his stock fell after the collapse of the British film industry and he was displaced to the United States (along with a very nasty cocaine habit), his career never fully recovered and seems to have tainted some of Anderson's legacy with him. History, as they say, is written by the winners and McDowell (though, admirably, he cleaned up and turned his life around) hasn't been on the winning end. And just to be clear, I like McDowell. The cast is terrific (including a very young Helen Mirren who looks amazingly similar to Jennifer Lawrence of today) which is why I give it a 5, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than for film history purposes (British New Wave film, the 1970's, Lindsay Anderson, etc.).

'O Lucky Man!' is a brilliant modern day tragedy befitting the times and culture in which in it was made. It is often very cynical and damning in it's critique of basically everything from capitalism, religion, and government. In many ways I found it more depressing than Anderson's masterpiece if... where we were first introduced to Malcolm McDowell's Mick Travis. 'O Lucky Man!' is a challenging film, it has really no plot or coherence to it. It is surrealist as it is described the only constant being the very naive Mick Travis is broken and broken by a society that eats up people who view the world with good and idealist eyes. Do we really like Travis? It's hard not to like Malcolm McDowell in anything even in the midsts of him playing sociopaths in if... or 'Clockwork Orange'. The thing about Travis that really draws the viewer in though is that his own personality s part of the surrealist landscape. No one is as hopeful or bright eyed of the world as Travis is. The great irony about 'O Lucky Man!' stems from taking this character and placing him in this hell. What I really appreciate about this film and if... that preceded it is the idea of Travis being an everyman. The societies in if... and 'Oh Lucky Man' are exaggerated to be sure but they offer an interesting exploration of these ideas. if... was a film about the young and old and how they violently collide and yet I find 'O Lucky Man' much more troubling. Essentially the film is about the breaking of Michael Travis. It's about money, the young and the old, and more importantly about finding an ideology to live by. Travis thinks he can make it in this world and the film mercilessly says that one cannot make their own destiny. That is what 'O Lucky Man' is about.. I find the soundtrack and even the irony of Travis eventually becoming the lucky man fascinating. Anderson has created a comedy of the blackest sort. Society says one thing and we see another.Michael Travis eventually gets his luck but at what cost? He signs his life away several times over the course of the film and the bright eyed youngster is reduced to a broken cynic by it's end. When the world eventually finds some use of Michael Travis, Michael Travis ceases to exist. I love that Anderson portrays this as a light hearted comedy because it is in actuality a very very dark film and that's what makes it all the funnier. We are asked to laugh at dreams and laugh at Travis because he resists cynicism. And of course the film ends when he becomes a cynic, brilliant and frightening.

So, you get tortured because you pop in on a secret nuclear facility? Welcome to waterboarding: it's just friendly persuasion. So you witness an accident involving 2 deaths and the cops threaten to charge you with manslaughter if you don't beat it (there is a lot of merchandise on the truck that they can take if you're not involved).The constable and the chief justice of a town are some of the participants in the after-hours sex club, where they have a chocolate sandwich on the stage. At least there was no minister there and Anderson was too naive and innocent to represent the pedophilic nature of modern day priests, denied the normal sexual outlets. For a man who despised the corruption of power, he did an outstanding job showing it ...all depicted as a very natural thing. The maid who delivers the tea, just as naturally unlocks Malcolm from the chair to which he is held prisoner.Such a great movie. Tonight I go back and see the commentary which certainly (by Malcolm) makes this a lot more sensible. Seeing Helen Mirren, the great lady of the English stage, acting as a young girl in many different parts gave you a real idea of the heights that she would come up to..