Bollocks to the rules! We're strong. We hunt!
I've given Lord of the Flies three chances now, and while I can agree that it meets the definition of an "important classic" film, as billed by the Criterion Collection's mission statement, that's not enough to earn my admiration or enjoyment of this admittedly interesting and risk-taking project that Peter Brook put together back in 1963.
I suppose that a big reason for my lack of enthusiasm is that I've simply aged out of that phase of life when William Golding's heavy-handed symbolism and allegories of the brutality of human nature might have proven more intriguing and impressive to me. The famous story, about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash that took the lives of all the adults accompanying them, has been institutionally canonized for decades now. Reading the book is an almost obligatory rite of passage for any high school student doing more than the bare minimum of literature studies, and even those who haven't read Golding's novel are familiar with the basic trope: that even the most properly raised and culturally civilized among us will inevitably descend into crude, primal brutality toward our fellow humans if the thin veneer of laws and social pressures keeping us in check are even briefly removed. It's a thesis that certainly exerted a broad appeal among the intelligentsia of the decades following World War II, a generation that had indeed witnessed the most horrifying and degrading examples of widespread cruelty to persecuted minorities, now captured for posterity and made undeniably real to those not personally involved, through the media of film recordings and a multitude of eyewitness accounts.
Golding's focus, though, wasn't so much on a hypothetical, transcultural core of human nature as it was on the critique he wanted to level against British society in particular. That's why he made the story about a selection of England's finest young specimens: choir boys, sons of privilege, born and bred to manage their emotions as discreetly and prudently as the material fortunes that most of them will eventually inherit. This specificity does help to clarify what Lord of the Flies is really about: that the "civilization" that modernists of that time considered (rather presumptuously, it now seems to me) to represent humanity's highest achievements was in its own way every bit as savage and barbaric as the under-developed heathens that had provided the foundational levels of Britain's imperialist social hierarchy. It's just that "we" (I speak as a descendant of those imperialists) had tidied up the appearances a bit, with respectable customs, deliberate procedures, rules of debate and inquiry, all the formalities that at least aspire to give everyone a fair hearing, even if the eventual outcome consistently tilts in favor of those whose power is already established, and for whom the laws are crafted to ensure their continued dominance.
Golding's (and by extension, experimental theatrical director Brook's) vehicle for demonstrating all this is to concoct a narrative in which this group of a couple dozen boys initially attempt to replicate as best they can the customs and principles they learned from their now-absent elders. Ralph and Piggy, the first two boys we meet after an introductory still photograph establishing sequence inescapably reminiscent of Chris Marker's La Jetee, each serve a specific function in making these points obvious to us.
Ralph is the voice of conscience and propriety, while Piggy is the too-easily mocked and persecuted voice of fairness and common sense, the near-sighted, asthmatic fat kid who was dealt a bad hand by life but who ought to deserve consideration anyway because he is, after all, "one of us." There's also Simon, the beatific Christ-figure, a willowy blond-haired boy who's main purpose is to droop forlornly at most every outburst of violence committed by his peers.
Regardless of the differences and tensions that might exist between Ralph, Piggy and Simon and their respective methods of handling conflict, they're all presented as basically honorable and sympathetic. Over against them, we're given the obvious "villain" of the story, Jack. He's a bit taller than the rest, candidly aggressive and charismatic, quite conscious of his multiple talents in the art of persuasion. Back in England, he'd been promoted to the student leadership of his boy's choir, so he's already a budding alpha male who relishes the freedom to exercise his manipulative gifts to the fullest. He sows strife and rebellion, leads expeditions and hunts, commands his underlings to kill, builds his little empire in the finest tradition of the Old Dominion.
So with these two poles established - either reinforce the tenuous connection between the ideal of judicious egalitarianism or descend without inhibition to the raw, bloody embrace of a "might makes right" ethos - Brook's film of Golding's novel proceeds to illustrate the stark madness of it all. Jack's unadulterated viciousness earns the loyalty of the gullible masses and winds up killing the saintly Simon and the pleading Piggy, and nearly costs righteous Ralph his life too, before the adults return to clean up the mess. In the process, presumably, we're supposed to reflect on the irrational fears and prejudices that permeate our own local customs and communities, with the preferred response veering toward finding ways to be more aware of the plight of the less fortunate around us and to keep our selfish exploits to a minimum. Or, if that message doesn't quite connect, I guess we're just left to re-examine ourselves the next time we look in the mirror and conclude that once we scratch below the surface, we really are just a bunch of heartless, greedy, amoral bastards after all.
So my problems with Lord of the Flies stem mostly from the obtuse heavy-handedness of its moralistic message, even though I can concede that it's probably one worth grappling with in our youth as we begin coming to grips with the deeply ingrained hypocrisies that are embedded in all that we take for granted. The rote use of metaphors and symbols employed here are just too on the nose for me to get into: the obvious parallels to the roots of organized religion in primitive fears and superstitions (the "beastie" and its attendant rituals) just seem so passe, at this time in my life, anyway.
I don't have as much of a problem with the amateurism of the acting (by a bunch of boys cast more for their availability than for their on-camera experience) as many of the film's detractors do. I just wish that the script had found better lines for the boys to deliver to each other - they do way too much explaining of their inner thoughts and motivations, leaving me at least with the feeling of being talked down to. It's a sensation I'm used to feeling when I'm listening to preachers, teachers or politicians who over-explain themselves, making points best delivered by nuance and allusion almost unbearably dull by excessive reinforcement, in the hopes that we really get what they're trying to tell us because it's really really important! That's not what I come to cinema looking for, and that's why Lord of the Flies doesn't really work so well for me.
Once I set all that aside (and unfortunately, it's too apparent all throughout the film for me to easily overlook), I can grant that there are some effective and impressive visual and dramatic sequences scattered throughout the film. Typically they're the scenes with little or no dialog, whether it's showing the boys foraging the island's shoreline and interiors in wandering packs (reminding me of similar explores I went on when I was their age) or Brook's dabbling with various forms of cinematic experimentation. Evocative edits and framings are deftly mingled in with the more prosaic expository sequences. Listening to the commentary and exploring the other special features in this well-rounded package of supplements, learning more about the unusual conditions that he'd established for the shoot, earns my respect for the audacity of what he had in mind. Given the impact that the book made on Western culture at that time, I am glad to see that someone as adventurous as Peter Brook took on the assignment of adapting it to film, and doing so in a way that went against the conventional rules of production that were in place at that time. I'm just not sure how eager I'll be for a return visit to Lord of the Flies when the inevitable blu-ray upgrade is released, most likely later this year.
I suppose that a big reason for my lack of enthusiasm is that I've simply aged out of that phase of life when William Golding's heavy-handed symbolism and allegories of the brutality of human nature might have proven more intriguing and impressive to me. The famous story, about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash that took the lives of all the adults accompanying them, has been institutionally canonized for decades now. Reading the book is an almost obligatory rite of passage for any high school student doing more than the bare minimum of literature studies, and even those who haven't read Golding's novel are familiar with the basic trope: that even the most properly raised and culturally civilized among us will inevitably descend into crude, primal brutality toward our fellow humans if the thin veneer of laws and social pressures keeping us in check are even briefly removed. It's a thesis that certainly exerted a broad appeal among the intelligentsia of the decades following World War II, a generation that had indeed witnessed the most horrifying and degrading examples of widespread cruelty to persecuted minorities, now captured for posterity and made undeniably real to those not personally involved, through the media of film recordings and a multitude of eyewitness accounts.
Golding's focus, though, wasn't so much on a hypothetical, transcultural core of human nature as it was on the critique he wanted to level against British society in particular. That's why he made the story about a selection of England's finest young specimens: choir boys, sons of privilege, born and bred to manage their emotions as discreetly and prudently as the material fortunes that most of them will eventually inherit. This specificity does help to clarify what Lord of the Flies is really about: that the "civilization" that modernists of that time considered (rather presumptuously, it now seems to me) to represent humanity's highest achievements was in its own way every bit as savage and barbaric as the under-developed heathens that had provided the foundational levels of Britain's imperialist social hierarchy. It's just that "we" (I speak as a descendant of those imperialists) had tidied up the appearances a bit, with respectable customs, deliberate procedures, rules of debate and inquiry, all the formalities that at least aspire to give everyone a fair hearing, even if the eventual outcome consistently tilts in favor of those whose power is already established, and for whom the laws are crafted to ensure their continued dominance.
Golding's (and by extension, experimental theatrical director Brook's) vehicle for demonstrating all this is to concoct a narrative in which this group of a couple dozen boys initially attempt to replicate as best they can the customs and principles they learned from their now-absent elders. Ralph and Piggy, the first two boys we meet after an introductory still photograph establishing sequence inescapably reminiscent of Chris Marker's La Jetee, each serve a specific function in making these points obvious to us.
Ralph is the voice of conscience and propriety, while Piggy is the too-easily mocked and persecuted voice of fairness and common sense, the near-sighted, asthmatic fat kid who was dealt a bad hand by life but who ought to deserve consideration anyway because he is, after all, "one of us." There's also Simon, the beatific Christ-figure, a willowy blond-haired boy who's main purpose is to droop forlornly at most every outburst of violence committed by his peers.
Regardless of the differences and tensions that might exist between Ralph, Piggy and Simon and their respective methods of handling conflict, they're all presented as basically honorable and sympathetic. Over against them, we're given the obvious "villain" of the story, Jack. He's a bit taller than the rest, candidly aggressive and charismatic, quite conscious of his multiple talents in the art of persuasion. Back in England, he'd been promoted to the student leadership of his boy's choir, so he's already a budding alpha male who relishes the freedom to exercise his manipulative gifts to the fullest. He sows strife and rebellion, leads expeditions and hunts, commands his underlings to kill, builds his little empire in the finest tradition of the Old Dominion.
So with these two poles established - either reinforce the tenuous connection between the ideal of judicious egalitarianism or descend without inhibition to the raw, bloody embrace of a "might makes right" ethos - Brook's film of Golding's novel proceeds to illustrate the stark madness of it all. Jack's unadulterated viciousness earns the loyalty of the gullible masses and winds up killing the saintly Simon and the pleading Piggy, and nearly costs righteous Ralph his life too, before the adults return to clean up the mess. In the process, presumably, we're supposed to reflect on the irrational fears and prejudices that permeate our own local customs and communities, with the preferred response veering toward finding ways to be more aware of the plight of the less fortunate around us and to keep our selfish exploits to a minimum. Or, if that message doesn't quite connect, I guess we're just left to re-examine ourselves the next time we look in the mirror and conclude that once we scratch below the surface, we really are just a bunch of heartless, greedy, amoral bastards after all.
So my problems with Lord of the Flies stem mostly from the obtuse heavy-handedness of its moralistic message, even though I can concede that it's probably one worth grappling with in our youth as we begin coming to grips with the deeply ingrained hypocrisies that are embedded in all that we take for granted. The rote use of metaphors and symbols employed here are just too on the nose for me to get into: the obvious parallels to the roots of organized religion in primitive fears and superstitions (the "beastie" and its attendant rituals) just seem so passe, at this time in my life, anyway.
I don't have as much of a problem with the amateurism of the acting (by a bunch of boys cast more for their availability than for their on-camera experience) as many of the film's detractors do. I just wish that the script had found better lines for the boys to deliver to each other - they do way too much explaining of their inner thoughts and motivations, leaving me at least with the feeling of being talked down to. It's a sensation I'm used to feeling when I'm listening to preachers, teachers or politicians who over-explain themselves, making points best delivered by nuance and allusion almost unbearably dull by excessive reinforcement, in the hopes that we really get what they're trying to tell us because it's really really important! That's not what I come to cinema looking for, and that's why Lord of the Flies doesn't really work so well for me.
Once I set all that aside (and unfortunately, it's too apparent all throughout the film for me to easily overlook), I can grant that there are some effective and impressive visual and dramatic sequences scattered throughout the film. Typically they're the scenes with little or no dialog, whether it's showing the boys foraging the island's shoreline and interiors in wandering packs (reminding me of similar explores I went on when I was their age) or Brook's dabbling with various forms of cinematic experimentation. Evocative edits and framings are deftly mingled in with the more prosaic expository sequences. Listening to the commentary and exploring the other special features in this well-rounded package of supplements, learning more about the unusual conditions that he'd established for the shoot, earns my respect for the audacity of what he had in mind. Given the impact that the book made on Western culture at that time, I am glad to see that someone as adventurous as Peter Brook took on the assignment of adapting it to film, and doing so in a way that went against the conventional rules of production that were in place at that time. I'm just not sure how eager I'll be for a return visit to Lord of the Flies when the inevitable blu-ray upgrade is released, most likely later this year.
Next: Billy Liar