For the first hour or so of this movie, everything seems pretty straightforward. Michael (played by Malcolm McDowell) is a young coffee salesman who's just starting to climb the ladder of success. His slow rise is sometimes humorous, and - with its sexual content - was somewhat reminiscent of the later American movie "The Secret Of My Success." At about the hour mark, though, this turns increasingly bizarre, beginning with Michael's arrest at a military installation. At that point his identity as a coffee salesman seems, for some reason, to simply disappear, and for the next two hours (yes, this is slightly over three hours long!) the movie takes on a darkly satirical note, critiquing pretty much everything: capitalism, religion, socialism, intellectuals - "the system" in general. No doubt the critique has some validity. I appreciated its balance in skewering pretty much everything, and truly appreciated that it took on the left as well as the right - so that Marx's famous dictum about religion becomes rephrased as "Revolution is the Opium of the Intellectuals" and Michael ends up being not only rejected but attacked by the homeless he tries to help; I took from all this the suggestion that socialists are often quite disconnected from those they claim to represent. The critique is valid, then, and the movie does make you think. It's also quite rambling at times, though, and often seems to lose its focus - or perhaps its better to say that it never really found its focus. In the end, it leaves little hope for redemption of any kind. If everything is as bad as this movie portrays, then frankly Mrs. Richards was right - and I'll say no more about that; you can watch the movie to find out about Mrs. Richards. In the end, I found this to be a rather dark and even depressing movie. 4/10
Review of O Lucky Man!
