Peter Brook's masterful adaptation--kids shrieking like little beasties, knockout rocks and a very dead pilot, Piggy washed out to sea--scared the hell out of me. Maybe the chaos of primordial rage is more terrifying when its prosecutors are well-spoken, civic-minded queenies wearing choir hats and pigskins a la Hannibal Lecter? The British have Hobbes to remind them.So on their way to Eton, or wherever, the boys crash on the island of wild pigs, where they entertain all manner of government-by-seashell, until the inner savage takes over and stages a coup against its enlightened French idolator. And speaking of Rousseau, did you know he begins his Reveries of the Solitary Walker, that locus classicus for stoic abandon and tranquility, with a temper tantrum? Those Eton kids are not alone after all.
Anyway, this is easily--easily--one of the most instantly appreciable movies I've ever seen--composed, clear, comprehensible--thanks mainly to its committment to the source material and its superbly modulated rhetoric of contrast--white and black, animal and man, sound and noise, essence and oblivion. I'll be thinking about what I saw for a long time now. Brook just burns it into you; he doesn't let up. But neither does he bully. The argument, conveyed largely through the neutral medium of still shots alternating with montage, works gently and quietly. You don't even feel the pressure and heat until after it's ended, when rhetoric no longer matters--when the innocence is lost, its child ungrown, and his soul barbarized.
Astonishing and historic filmmaking. Just--amazing, really.
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