Never Apologize (15.)
Directed by Mike Kaplan.
Starring Malcolm McDowell. 110 mins.
A film record of Malcolm McDowell’s one man stage show, a tribute to friend and mentor director Lindsay Anderson, Never Apologize consists of McDowell, his blue jeans hitched up to Simon Cowell levels, relating anecdotes and reading diaries entries.
McDowell career is like that of a competitor in a field event who breaks the world record with his first jump/ throw and then walks off leaving the rest to desperately try and emulate his feat. After many long years gainfully employed playing villains in Sci-fi pieces I approached this, a project that he initiated and conceived himself, with the hope that perhaps it might reignite some of the extraordinary charisma and talent seen in his early films, especially A Clockwork Orange. What we get though is purely luvvie.
Everybody is a “darling” or “lovely” – even Anderson, though every story seems to revolve around him being curt, abrupt or rude. Most of the stories aren’t particularly interesting but the unseen American audience can be heard lapping it up, particularly when he manages to squeeze in mentions of Larry Olivier or Princess Diana.
McDowell’s love and affection for Anderson is clear (in contrast, he’s tended to be rather grudging about Kubrick) which perhaps blinded him to the fact that his tribute doesn’t necessarily show its subject in that great a light. Beyond his cruel and acidic tongue there’s the paucity and variable quality of his film output. The casting and making of their first collaboration If…. is given over half an hour of screen time; their third and last, Britannia Hospital, gets barely a minute.
A gentle subtext explores how the British establishment deals with its rebels by assimilating them. The story that gives the film its title is about a spat with Alan Bates (who, even among this collection of the terribly nice, was apparently incredibly nice) and the point of it is Anderson’s belief that he was a rebel, someone who had stuck to his guns and not sold out. The location for this tale though was a champagne luncheon.
Still, if we accept Anderson’s opinion of himself as an anti-establishment figure, then it is a horrible irony that he should be commemorated in the tamest way possible, and by a performer whose own threat and subversion has been so totally and utterly neutered.
Directed by Mike Kaplan.
Starring Malcolm McDowell. 110 mins.
A film record of Malcolm McDowell’s one man stage show, a tribute to friend and mentor director Lindsay Anderson, Never Apologize consists of McDowell, his blue jeans hitched up to Simon Cowell levels, relating anecdotes and reading diaries entries.
McDowell career is like that of a competitor in a field event who breaks the world record with his first jump/ throw and then walks off leaving the rest to desperately try and emulate his feat. After many long years gainfully employed playing villains in Sci-fi pieces I approached this, a project that he initiated and conceived himself, with the hope that perhaps it might reignite some of the extraordinary charisma and talent seen in his early films, especially A Clockwork Orange. What we get though is purely luvvie.
Everybody is a “darling” or “lovely” – even Anderson, though every story seems to revolve around him being curt, abrupt or rude. Most of the stories aren’t particularly interesting but the unseen American audience can be heard lapping it up, particularly when he manages to squeeze in mentions of Larry Olivier or Princess Diana.
McDowell’s love and affection for Anderson is clear (in contrast, he’s tended to be rather grudging about Kubrick) which perhaps blinded him to the fact that his tribute doesn’t necessarily show its subject in that great a light. Beyond his cruel and acidic tongue there’s the paucity and variable quality of his film output. The casting and making of their first collaboration If…. is given over half an hour of screen time; their third and last, Britannia Hospital, gets barely a minute.
A gentle subtext explores how the British establishment deals with its rebels by assimilating them. The story that gives the film its title is about a spat with Alan Bates (who, even among this collection of the terribly nice, was apparently incredibly nice) and the point of it is Anderson’s belief that he was a rebel, someone who had stuck to his guns and not sold out. The location for this tale though was a champagne luncheon.
Still, if we accept Anderson’s opinion of himself as an anti-establishment figure, then it is a horrible irony that he should be commemorated in the tamest way possible, and by a performer whose own threat and subversion has been so totally and utterly neutered.
