Review of Look Back in Anger (1959) by Max N — 20 Sep 2008

What a pleasure to hear vitriol expressed in beautiful English by Richard Burton. Had the play been written today, it would only be filled with expletives repeated. It was interesting to see a film about the waning days of the British Empire, as we are now at the end of the rule of America.

In the film, a young man with a university degree can not get past selling candy in the street and playing his trumpet at a blues bar at night. He takes his frustation out on his wife, who is the daughter of a upper middle class family who had spent time in India.

But there are no frontiers for the Burton character to conquer, and he screams and blames those closest to him: his wife. She leaves him while pregnant and her best friend takes up with him. The baby is eventually lost and she can no longer have children.

She returns and they reconcile; the other girlfried disappears. There is no future here for these people: Just getting by each day with no seeming hope for anything. (except maybe a glimmer of possible change, but not likely.

..)Pretty brutal stuff.