Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Alan Price, formerly of the band, The Animals, scores this 1973 dramedy/musical, appearing as himself with his little band throughout the 183 spectacular minutes of the R-rated O Lucky Man, which follows If... in director Lindsay Anderson’s trilogy (just reviewed by me). Heck, Anderson himself plays the quiet band manager and the more vocal director at the end of the movie auditioning for the star of O Lucky Man (yes, he discovers Malcolm McDowell, hehe). These are only a sample of the treats awaiting you. Price has at least half a dozen original and toe-tapping songs that comment on what McDowell’s character is going through and here are the lyrics to the oft-repeated title song:


If you have a friend on whom you think
you can rely - You are a lucky man!
If you've found the reason to live on and
not to die - You are a lucky man!
Preachers and poets and scholars don't know it,
Temples and statues and steeples won't show it,
If you've got the secret just try not to blow
it - Stay a lucky man!
If you've found the meaning of the truth
in this old world- You are a lucky man!
If knowledge hangs around your neck like
pearls instead of chains - You are a lucky man!
Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you.
Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you.
When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell-
You'll be a lucky man!

What a captivating movie! I guess I should begin by noting that it’s inspired by Voltaire’s novel, Candide, where people who Candide thought were dead keep hilariously showing up on his travels through Europe. In O Lucky Man our hero, Michael Travis (not Mick here) keeps meeting people who look familiar and indeed many of the actors and actresses take on multiple roles. Their second, bemused looks at each other are very amusing. This technique highlights a message of the movie and book that “everyone’s going through changes, no one knows what’s going on, and everybody changes places, but the world still carries on. (rest of lyrics at end of review). While in Candide the hero’s looking for his lost love, in this movie lovers just come to Travis in strange ways and he’s lucky in business at first, too, as opportunities open for him. Telling is the apple given to the white-dressed Travis by his coffee company’s manager. Travis, like a modern-day Adam, was about to learn the evil—and some good--ways of the world.

Because our hero was chosen by the company’s psychologist to have a completely sincere smile (see cover pic above) and that she would buy from him, he’s sent forth to sell coffee to the northeast section of England, to replace a man who skipped out with the goods when a better opportunity appeared. His car radio spews out news of unrest and disaster in the world, in contrast later to hearing the weather and a church sermon. Soon a guy overtakes him, crashes after disappearing into fog, and dies while Travis and two cops watch. They warn him about being a witness when it’s his word against theirs and offer him something off the turned-over truck to stay quiet, then when puzzled Travis leaves, they toss the remains of the truck’s load into their car trunk.

From there Travis makes it to the hotel where he’s expected and experiences a little success as a salesman for a day, being treated that night to a nightclub to watch kinky sex on stage. His luck turns bad when that psychologist/trainer calls him in the middle of the night to tell him to go to Scotland right away. Before she’s able to give him directions, the line goes dead, but our hero ‘lucks out’ when a mysterious boarder lures him to his room and reveals a “surprisingly warm” suit that looks like it’s made of gold thread, just the perfect fit for Travis. He heads for Scotland.

It’s not long before he winds up lost at the fence around a restricted government area, is captured, questioned, tortured, made to confess that he’s a Russian spy, saved by an imminent nuclear explosion when everyone runs for their lives, finally escaping the gigantic blasts that burn up trees and the ground and his poor car, only to be left huddled in the rain like the last survivor of a nuclear war. Oh, what religious significance we find in the pastoral church he stumbles into. After snoozing in the last pew during a service, he awakes to try to steal some bread under the altar, but instead a woman tidying up the church sharply informs him that it’s God’s food. Seeing that he’s just a boy (really a young man), she cradles him on her lap and offers her breast to suckle. Hmmm...

Soon her children are leading him across the meadow to help him find the highway back to London, the south. He’s told by the woman that the north is no place for him, hehe. The instrumental music (Price on keyboard) here reflects the joy and innocence of our hero. If you predict that his luck turns bad again, you’re catching on! He hitches a ride with a person looking for research subjects at the clinic, thinking he would make some easy money, and, of course, it’s hardly what he expects as nothing is during this movie. I just realized that Travis is the one coming back unexpectedly to life over and over again, like you can’t keep a good man down.

To finish out the first tape of this double-tape VHS movie, our hero lucks out by hitching a ride back to London with Alan Price, his band and a reporter or novelist who is studying the band. She’s played enchantingly by a very young Helen Mirren who I just happened to watch today in the 2003 movie, Calendar Girls, thirty six years later! With a more mature beauty she feels free to bare it all for charity, but not back in 1973, hehe. There’s mostly other women’s breasts displayed in O Lucky Man and nothing else to speak of, unless you count an old judge who in his quarters strips to red bikini shorts, lies down on his wrinkled chest and instructs a lady to whip the air above his butt. So anyway, the second tape begins with Travis still dreaming of becoming wealthy, so he grabs at another ‘lucky’ opportunity, even when two men die in front of him for dealing with the ruthless, rich man he wishes to work for.

I’m not going into any more detail. You’ve got the idea by now, haven’t you? It’s a movie musical that slams traditional religion (Mirren’s character assures Travis that all religions are true), science and capitalism. It’s about the changes people go through for good or bad, depending on their choices. Our hero gets taught a lesson about being greedy and so prison makes him a new man (which is a slam on prisons), yet does his life become better? Will he fit in with poor people who would rather die? Watch and find out!


Final Comments

If you don’t see If..., you still can enjoy O Lucky Man. In fact, most adults will certainly enjoy this movie even if they’re not British, but they’ll need to understand English since a DVD with language selection strangely hasn’t been produced. I’ve already managed to watch it twice in a few days and the music and striking images dance around in my head the rest of the time. I shall have to withdraw one of my stars for If... because I love O Lucky Man so much more. Along with the bizarre and fun story and the extremely suitable music, I treasure the acting by several from the set of If... as well as many new ones like Mirren, Ralph Richardson, Wallas Eaton (he had five roles!) and Rachel Roberts. One of the producers, Michael Medwin, had three small roles and the director had two as I’ve already mentioned. O Lucky Man was one, big family effort.

Some of you may wonder if Anderson, the director, revealed his repressed homosexual urges on screen as he did in If... I couldn’t detect any obvious revelations except perhaps when the Prison Governor tells Travis that he has eyes like Steve McQueen. Perhaps Anderson had screenwriter David Sherwin add that? Maybe, too, he criticized the crudeness and insignificance of heterosexual love.

Honestly, there was never a moment that failed to captivate me, and the ending, besides the party with all the actors in the movie dancing as balloons fell, continues to thrill me with wonder and not because it pushes the third movie of the trilogy, Britannia Hospital, on me. I happily recommend O Lucky Man, a gorgeous, all-color, all-professional movie.

These lyrics of "Changes" are sung to the tune of "What A Friend We Have In Jesus"...


Everyone is going through changes

No one goes what's going on.
And everybody changes places

But the world still carries on.

Love must always change to sorrow

And everyone must play the game.
It's here today and gone tomorrow

But the world goes on the same.

Everyone is going through changes
...
Now love must always change to sorrow
...

Everyone is going through changes
...
Now love must always change to sorrow
...

Everyone is going through changes

But the world still carries on.


Millinocket’s Review of Calendar Girls:
http://www.epinions.com/content_144616099460

My review of If….
http://www.epinions.com/content_149934542468

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age