Unfortunately, as with so many of these “Life isn’t fair” rants against the world, the film has not dated well. These days it always makes me think of a suburban teenager slamming the bedroom door to make a point about not getting their way. And Britannia Hospital confirmed this view. I would recommend the film to anyone for its cast – Michael Elphick doesn’t even get multiple roles – and for the of-its-time music of Alan Price, but the film doesn’t produce the expected anger (in the way that, say, Paths of Glory does), just annoyance at the director.

It’s a very odd movie. It is, by and large, a satire. We see a lot of the dark side of human nature, and we see a bit of the good side. It’s all shot through with a kind of odd detachment so you don’t spend the movie thinking “gosh, how awful for the poor boy,” and just as you can’t see where it’s going to and it all gets really confusing, everything snaps into focus when the director of the movie slaps the hero across the face with the script. You see, despite its criticisms of human nature, it’s quite a joyful film, too. I guess that’s the crux of absurdism. Yes, we humans are ridiculous, but eventually you’ve got to laugh. Also, I don’t think by the end of the movie that Mick Travis is still innocent, although it takes him an awfully long time to wise up. I think in the end he’s no longer innocent, but he has recovered his hope.

There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie where he and other hopeful coffee salesmen are being trained to smile. To Mick the sincere-fake salesman smile comes naturally and he eagerly puts himself forward to shake the head of PR’s hand and beam a big grin at her. At the end of the movie, during a screen test the director asks him to smile, and says he can’t see what there is to smile about. Then the director smacks him with the script and as he recovers from the shock his mouth slowly starts to kink upwards. There’s a cut to black and then when the picture returns, he’s grinning and dancing with the entire cast and the band/chorus. Clearly the implication is that he’s seen a lot of what the world has to offer, a lot of the awfulness it can dump on you, and realised that ultimately he is lucky to have survived the experience and learned from it. The movie is aiming to be a similar kind of smack round the face for the viewer. This is why the movie is about the redemptive power of art.

The film doesn’t attempt to tell you in dialogue exactly what it is that he has learnt, which is good, because any attempt to encapsulate the previous three hours in a quick soundbite would be trite. And it’s definitely not sarcasm. It’s a much more illuminated movie than that.

Does that go any way towards answering your question?

How can someone be innocent and believe that the best for which we can hope is not to die like a dog? Is this one of those sarcasm things that I’ve missed again?

R xxx