If… (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

If… (1968) -- L. Anderson

Lindsay Anderson's heralded counter-culture film manages to portray a sense of the norms and culture of the British boarding school experience from its very opening scenes.  Then, it shows how arbitrary some of the institutional rules may be and how people in the position to enforce them may act in cruel and irresponsible ways (i.e. power corrupts).  This satirizing sets the stage for resistance and a trio of more independently minded students, led by Malcolm McDowell (impossibly young), take on the establishment.  The film has a slow build and ends with a shock (to which your reaction may show just how desensitized we've become 45 years later).  A tribute in spirit to Jean Vigo's Zero de Conduite (from 1933), also well worth checking out.