Everything about this is 'pretty good' but director John Mackenzie was still finding his way and probably not the man to raise this to the level it might have reached. Based on Howard Barker's own play this is clearly a serious piece and that the fate of a baby overshadows the anti religious aspect is unfortunate. Ironically, although the fate of the babe, for me, gets in the way of the main thrust of the film, it is the most realistic portrayal I have ever seen. The film also takes a while to get going and this coincides with the arrival of Roy Harper. No great actor but his likeable and laid back performance knocks spots off some of the others. I enjoyed the film with its glimpses of Greenwich, Woolwich and Brighton (including the lost pier) but just feel it could have been so much better.
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oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx30 June 2010The first riddle we have here is what exactly does the title mean? The programmer at the Edinburgh International Film Festival went with the de Beauvoir idea that "women are made not born", though she quoted Dworkin co-opting this poor translation. The full Dworkin quotation offered is: "Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.". I find this a slightly ludicrous statement, as if it's implying that men by contrast are not subject to intensive (and ruinous) social conditioning and abstraction by the opposite sex, when quite patently we are. It's worth having feminist ideology in mind though whilst watching this film as it is a good way of understanding the commentary offered on the various men in the film.
My take on the meaning is to link the title to the melancholy lyric of a song played near the end, "too late to create a world with care", that is, the world is already made, Pandora's box is already opened never to be closed again (recognising the irony of using the term in a review of a feminist or at least superficially feminist film).
The film is often marketed as being about an affair between a housewife and a rock star, however Valerie is more of a working mum, and there are three men in the movie with designs on her. Pop star Mike Preston is outwardly charming and modern, but really this charm is a teflon shield he holds in front of his sophistry, Father Dyson is the local priest who abuses his position of trust to woo Valerie, whilst Mahdav is an Indian immigrant who is university educated and the boss at the switchboard where Valerie works.
Each of these men are deconstructed. Father Dyson and Mike Preston are shown as equivalents (after being set up as opposite poles) in staggering scenes where they feed off of Valerie's grief, Father Dyson for a sermon, and Mike Preston for his sermon equivalent, a pop song. Dyson records his sermon and sits in a church listening to himself on playback, whilst Preston does the same in a recording studio. I think there's an idea here that men are systematisers, expanding their observations into grandiose theories, going from the specific to the general, whereas women understand people on a case-by-case basis. To quote from Dworkin myself: "While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact."
Mahdav is a fantasist who interprets a roll in the sack with Valerie as meaning she wants to marry him, he treats her as an object of veneration. He's deeply insensitive, and, like Preston, uses her grief as an opportunity to get closer to her.
Maybe the film is about how confused people become by their own ideologies. I know a young lady who quite confidently told me that a man's weight is not important in terms of attractiveness (the ideology), a couple of weeks later she is telling me of her alarm that her boyfriend is putting on weight, and her action plan to sort that out (the practise). The programmer of the festival, having quoted Dworkin, then complained about the director's lack of chivalry in revealing that he had slept with actress Carole Barker on set (chivalry being an opposite concept based on the concept of the weakness of women). People take themselves very seriously, I for example am sat here re-reading what I have been writing, using the movie as fodder for my sermon.
The movie becomes a Satan's Brew in the end, none of the characters end up being likable, and the film pines for the playground, which is supposedly a pure state, a quite iconic black and white shot of an iron maypole with chains dangling down and coming to a halt symbolises this. I don't think you can call Valerie a heroine either, once you've got past her beauty (something that the men in the film can't do) she is quite cynical, "I don't think people are that lovable really", and simple. Ah what a wicked wicked film.
Apparently the inspiration for the movie is the Beatles' song Eleanor Rigby ("All the lonely people/Where do they all come from?"). One of the lyrics is pretty reflexive for the film, given the director's own name (Mackenzie), "Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear", especially as this film remains little known and the programmers had to instigate a dig around in the archives at the distributor to even find a copy.
Just to note that it's very well shot at all times, in particular there's a montage of baby items that is quite staggering, won't spoil the context. -
thecatcanwait9 November 2011The few (3) online critical reviews for this film suggest how "dull and dated" it is. But comments on YouTube tend toward "great little movie" "cult classic" "lost gem" .. Roy Harper fans i guess ..who also consider Mr Roy to be a bit of a lost gem
So whether, or how much, you like this film might depend on how much you are "into" Roy Harper. And also whether, or how much, you liked the early 70′s (assuming you're old enough to have memories of it)
Carol White (as Valerie) seems to be doing a reprise of her role in Cathy Come Home: working class girl pushing a pram around looking for escape – relief, pleasure, ordinary happiness – from a small bleak life; getting hit on by various blokes, who leech off her grief: Roy "makes" a song out of it; a do-gooding vicar makes a sermon; and a hapless Asian from work makes a twatty poem.
Roy Harper comes across as earnest rather than endearing – something you could say about the film in general. The nitty isn't gritty or politically engaged enough to be Ken Loach; the characterisations aren't idiosyncratic enough to be Mike Leigh. It's all a bit, well – as well-intentioned, but as dull as a Roy Harper dirge about old Englande (where old cricketers are leaving the crease or dying of boredom or something)
"Do you think a girl should go to bed with a fella if he doesn't love her?" asks Carol." "No. Unless it's me" quips Roy. Before long he's abandoned her to carry on with his free love mystical hippy beardy rock star thang (although he's written that song about her. Which she turns off. Well done Carol)
"Is it too late to create a world made of care" sings Roy at the end. Yes it is. And even though Made tries to be a film made of care – touched with caring sort of sentiments – in the end it just ends up feeling care-worn; and made (as in "manufactured") in the 1970′s film factory Social Conscience School for bleak and cheerless cliché. -
petewiggs4 April 2001the best film ever set in woolwich, carol white reprises her single mum role from poor cow (etc) to tragi-comic effect. the great roy harper sings some of his best songs and performs with deadpan northern charisma maybe the best grimy early seventies british film
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malcolmgsw4 November 2022Firstly I would say that the only entertaining part of this match is the match at Queen's Park Rangers. They are supposedly playing Brentford who normally played in red and white stripes,not the all red strip shown in this film.
Football back then was very much as shown in this film. It just seems light years away from today Well as to the film it seems like a reprise of Poor Cow,a film which Carol White didn't mention in her autobiography.
She was clearly a very vunerable person who died tragically young. Appearing in films like this was not going to get her career restarted. As for Roy Harper the less said the better. -
michaelarmer28 November 2019If you want to watch a movie before you end it all, this is the one!
A very nitty gritty, grimy drama looking at the worst side of life in the 1970's, a kind of sequel to Poor Cow (1967). It has a higher rating than it deserves, some people look deeply into it to find hidden meanings and metaphors, maybe it makes them feel intelligent ? For me it is a dreary film which just made me feel depressed, maybe it worked in its day (early 1970's) but not anymore, I lived through this period as a boy in Northern England, I had soul destroying problems at the time, it was never this bad or grimy.
Carol White plays a slightly disturbed, miserable cow, who has made all the wrong choices in life, as a single mum, living with her ailing mother (no Father or Father of her baby appear), it s all very despairing, she has a few (more) self-destroying 'relationships' her baby dies, followed by her mother. I am not sympathetic with the character because she herself creates most of the problems she has. Maybe some people suffer from lives like this in real life, but do we really need to see it all compressed into one 1hr 45 min film.
Carol White acts well, but she is the only one, everyone else seems a bit wooden, or maybe dumbfounded by the kind of role they have to play, Roy Harper was poor, he is a Musician not an actor and it shows, his music is not that good either, his biggest claim to fame being a backing voice for Pink Floyd for a very short time, if this was his shot at acting stardom, it failed miserably.
The editing was poor, also continuity, the close-up and ultra close-up shots are a put off with me, I have never liked them, as you miss so much of the real picture, it feels like it was made on the cheap, very cheap, but unlike some films which are made cheap but are successful, this is not one of them.
This film seems to mirror Carol White's real life a little, she had a number of relationships, 3 short marriages, had problems with drugs and alcohol, tried to commit suicide several times and died at 48 with liver disease.