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Yar, you be here: The Ruling Class - Criterion Collection > Customer Reviews The Ruling Class - Criterion Collection Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 17 Reviews)Veddy British--And Very "60s"
OK, so it was made in 1972, but the 60s didn't really come to an end until at least 1973 or '74. I remember seeing it when I was 19 years old and feeling appropriately dazed by the experience. It was right up there with Ken Russell's THE DEVILS and Fellini's ROMA (and SATYRICON, which while released in 1969, I didn't see until '72)as one of my trippy movie favorites of the period. I don't know how well I really understood any of those movies at the time, but I liked "weird"--and I liked iconoclastic. And these films all seemed to be pretty groundbreaking at the time. I'm sure I fancied myself quite the young aesthete. In recent years I've reviewed all of these movies except ROMA, and have a much more qualified view of them. I don't deny their giddy power, and I still admire their experimentalism. But I don't see them as masterpieces. I would not dismiss them as period curios exactly either, but they were of a different era, and it shows. At the time, it seemed to my untrained critical sensibility that we were on the verge of a new age of boldly experimental cinema. Now I can't help see it as something of a (fascinating but not entirely successful) blip in cinema history. It was, to be sure, a wild time. And there was little time to reflect on all its attendant emotions in tranquility. It has been argued that THE RULING CLASS takes on some easy targets. With all the social upheaval of the 60s, it was hardly an original conceit to satirize British nobility. The English upper classes have been poked fun at for centuries, of course, but screenwriter Peter Barnes (who also wrote the play on which this film is based) goes way beyond your usual social satire and into the realm of the utterly surreal. It doesn't do to simply poke fun at the upper crust, not when there's a culture war raging outside the studio. Making gentle fun of upper class eccentricities was not going to cut in 1965 (when the play was written). Not when actual insanity was the order of the day. The death of the "eccentric" 13th Earl of Gurnsey (Harry Andrews) and the ascendency of his certifiably insane son Jack (Peter O'Toole) to the title is reflective of the change in point of view. The pater familias is dispatched early in the film, accidentally hanging himself while wearing a 19th century military jacket and a tutu. Son Jack, who suffers from delusions that he is Jesus and has long been tucked away in an asylum, arrives to assume his father's title. "J.C." (as he prefers to be called) is sincerely Christlike in his insanity. And his Gospel of Love suggests not only Christianity in its purest form, but also the emerging hippie culture of the mid-60s (and significantly, its waning hold on the public imagination by the early 70s). It may seem an obvious ploy now, but it is also emblematic of its era that J.C. is only once again declared sane when he abandons his Christ-like persona in favor of one much more sinister. Of course, those around him cannot see that he has surrendered his identity as "the God of Love" in favor of that of a self-righteous, sexually repressed and calculated killer (a la Jack the Ripper). And is there not a certain irony in the fact that in his new state of delusion, the "prostitutes" he now dispatches are in reality, members of the elite class (one by birth and one by marriage, interestingly enough)? Barnes and director Peter Medak give the audience plenty to chew over. But maybe it's because I'm older and wiser, or maybe more cinematically jaded, but looking back at the movie some 33 years on (as many years as the actual Christ was on the planet, we're told), it doesn't seem to be quite enough. For those of us Yanks who became kiddie Anglophiles because of the Beatles, THE AVENGERS and Carnaby Street, this certainly seemed to offer a darker, corrective vision of British society and culture. That much it achieved. But watching it again in 2005, I can't help think that it could have sharper, more concise (it's a rambling 2 1/2 hours)and a whole lot funnier. Scary Satire
"The Ruling Class" is the kind of sharp, intelligent, vicious satire that only the Brits can do this well. It is by turns, curious, silly, dry, sharp and nasty as a cat's litter box. The plot twists are as crazy as the main character, and the movie's theme, "the idle rich have a way of protecting themselves" is as pertinent today as it was in 1972. Indeed, this is the type of movie which could only be made in the 1970's, the last time when the authority structures and "the ruling classes" were regarded with general suspicion by the rest of society. In a bravura performance which should have won him an Oscar, Peter O'Toole plays Jack Gurney, heir to an English earldom. There's only one problem: Jack is in the looney bin because he thinks he's Jesus Christ. The plot revolves around how the rest of Jack's relatives plan to "cure" him so he's just "sane" enough to inherit and then manipulate him to their own ends. Needless to say, sly, cynical jokes about religious and social hypocrisy are abundant, and they're all right on the money. Like the very best of British satires, the more you bring to this movie, the more rewards it holds. A knowledge of Verdi operas, 19th Century French Romantic literature, English music hall traditions, and English public school songs will enhance one's enjoyment of this movie immeasurably, although none of it is necessary to appreciate the wit and silliness of what's going on here. Alistair Sim, as the nervous, confused and senile archbishop is a gem throughout, a man whose conflicts are all too obvious because they're all too human. Eventually, Jack is "cured," and the change his personality undergoes is radical, to say the least. To tip it off would be to give things away, but its rather remarkable what the filmakers have to say is a socially acceptable alternative to wanting to be Jesus Christ. Watch out for the ending of this movie. It's violent, vicious and totally uncompromising. It's meant to repel the viewer and does so effectively. Don't let that prevent you from enjoying the rest of all the brilliance and wit this film has in such abundance, however. Yes, the scene in Parliament is over-long, overdone and the one flaw in the movie, but, that aside, this film will make laugh, make you cry, make you think and make you angry, all at the same time. How many movies today can you think of that manage to do all that? Hypnotically watchable
This movie is certainly abnormal- the feeling it engenders is resembles bizzare synthesis of Monty Python, a Clockwork Orange, and Wooster and Jeeves, and it slides wildly from cruelty to satire to farce to oddity and back. Nonetheless, it holds together, and is immensely watchable. In the first half, O'Toole's God of Love is a comedic creation to rank with the best, a bizzare, befuddled Jesus given to outcries of "I put it in my galvanised pressure cooker! Hroom!" Nonetheless, the machinations of his aristocratic family, and the knowledge that these madmen are in power, give even this exuberantly fun part something of an edge. In the second half, his transformation into Jack the Ripper marks the movie's descent into something out of a Philip K. Dick novel, showing a world where madness and violence abound, and viciousness is the key to high society. While such an abrupt turn would be fatal to most movies, but this one carries, maintaining its sense of black humor and hatred of the upper classes. The movie has its faults, most notably the unavoidable feeling that one is watching a play on film, and not a movie, and I can easily see myself skipping the second half when in a lighthearted mood, but it is nonetheless a great and well executed piece of cinema. Well worthy of the Criterion collection.
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