O Lucky Man Review

This is one of my favorites and I've declared it a flawed masterpiece several times.  It was finally released as a 2 disc DVD in 2007 and if you enjoy innovative 70s era movies, Malcolm McDowell, Clockwork Orange,and/ or quirky morality tales, stop reading the review, buy it, watch it, enjoy it and read this later.

Director Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life) made a star (and began a life-long friendship) with Malcolm McDowell  on  the ground-breaking 1968  If. . . .(considered one of the finest of the British new wave films).

McDowell was cast in the lead role of Alex in A Clockwork Orange after Kubrick saw If....    The controversy of  both If... and even more so.. A Clockwork Orange (1971) is legendary.  McDowell wanted to work again with Anderson, and worked with If... screenwriter David Sherwin on an idea that became O Lucky Man and featured many key cast members of If.. and others.

Cast members wind up playing multiple parts (like an ensemble theater company) in O Lucky Man and it became the second of a trilogy that includes  1968's If...,  1973's O Lucky Man  and  1982's Britannia Hospital (McDowell has a smaller supporting role in Hospital which while worthwhile is not in the same league as the earlier films).

Malcolm McDowell plays Mick Travis,  an evenly tempered, wide-eyed ambitious go-getter who is so overly anxious to please and get ahead he lets life's cruelties simply slide off of him.  He is young, so extremely over-confident he trusts people and his own ability to out-smart and out-play them to a fault.

The loose story begins as Mick learns all about how Imperial Coffee is made and packaged.  He's training to be a coffee salesman and as luck would have it a sudden opening in the Northern territory, leads to Mick's immediate deployment.

Thus a series of adventures begins for Mick who seems at first blessed with good fortune and then alternately blessed and cursed with the situations he finds himself in. 

Mick's journey finds him being seduced by his landlady, invited to a private sex club attended by all the movers and shakers in the small town, accused of a treasonous act, tortured, witness to a huge industrial/military disaster, and much more.  He hobnobs with a rock band, international business tycoons, scientists, politicians and a beautiful young English debutante.  He's double-crossed by nearly everyone he meets and even when he tries to help the homeless-things don't turn out well at all.

Mick learns each of his lessons that hard way and each chapter of his adventure is punctuated by a song or snippet of a song from ex-Animal member Alan Price.

It all leads to a twist that seems to break the fourth wall.. or does it?

Director Anderson shoots and constructs the film's narrative completely from Mick's perspective, using Alan Price as a sort of running Greek chorus commentary on what's happening on-screen.   The pacing of the film is at times slow, but I've never been bored by a moment of it.

The recognizable cast of British actors plays multiple roles adding an odd surrealistic quality to the proceedings.

Here's the main cast:

Mick Travis . . . . . Malcolm McDowell
Monty, Sir James Burgess . . . . . Ralph Richardson
Gloria, Mme. Paillard . . . . . Rachael Roberts
Mr. Duff, Charlie Johnson, Dr. Munda . . . . . Arthur Lowe
Patricia . . . . . Helen Mirren
Tea Lady . . . . . Dandy Nichols
Sister Hallett, Usher . . . . . Mona Washbourne
Dr. Millar, Prof. Stewart . . . . . Graham Crowden
Chairman, Prison Governor . . . . . Peter Jeffrey
Mrs. Ball, Vicar's Wife . . . . . Mary MacLeod
Welfare Lady . . . . . Vivian Pickles
Captain, Dickie Belminster . . . . . Michael Medwin

The overriding theme of the film is that the world is run by greed and ruthlessness and although the way to succeed is by adapting a cocky self-assured self-confidence, the fix is in and it's unlikely anyone can ever succeed by playing the game, because those in power don't like to share or make room for new players.

If this makes the film seem depressingly cynical, understand there's a light touch employed throughout.  We keep our sense of optimism and enthusiasm throughout, just like the character of Mick does.

You'll enjoy it even more if you appreciate dry droll British wit.

Yes, that's a very young Helen Mirren as Patricia and Vivian Pickles or Harold and Maude has a memorable role  while Sir Ralph Richardson plays two important memorable characters.

Warners' DVD of O Lucky Man! is presents the film on two discs nearly flawlessly.  Both parts have a worthwhile commentary from  Malcolm McDowell, musician Alan Price and screenwriter David Sherwin. Disc one has a 1973 featurette called Innovations in Filmmaking celebrating Lindsay Anderson's works which in 1973 weren't well known outside of art house devotees, critics and film school professors.   Disc 2 features a very long worthwhile interview based career documentary on Malcolm McDowell by Jan Harlan made in 2007.  Towards the end, McDowell gushes about his kids' accomplishments and a little too much time is devoted to some of Malcolm's more recent lesser work-but I enjoyed every minute of it anyway.

It's a great film and I enjoy the generous extras.  Bravo!!!!

From a 1973   LINDSEY ANDERSON interview regarding a key scene in the film:

"It's not at all about a young actor who's going to get a part.  It's about life.  Actually this is the paradox that people find difficult to accept: that he is hit over the head and experiences, in traditional Zen terms, his moment of illumination.  And he doesn't look at us - into the camera - and see clearly, in obedience to the fact that he has been hit on the head and told to, but because that moment suddenly brought to him the awareness of the correct way of relating to experience, to everything that has happened to him and will happen to him.  Well, that's if you want to give that type of interpretation.  I hesitate to, because I want people to make their own."