Criterion Challenge week 15: Lord of the Flies (1963)
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
This year, I am participating in the Criterion Challenge, an annual online film challenge. The goal is to watch 52 individual films in the Criterion Collection, with each film fulfilling a weekly prompt, and log them on Letterboxd. Last week, I watched Vertigo (1958) from the Criterion Channel's "all-time favorites” list.
The prompt for week 15 is movies made in the 1960s. In the 1700+ films in the full collection, 338 films fulfill this criteria. While the collection contains films from all over the world, I have been picking out American movies for the last few decade-centered prompts. Anything prior to the 1970s is considered the “golden age of Hollywood,” and since I don't often watch movies from that era, I wanted to explore this specific part of American film history.
For week 15, I had a lot of options that looked interesting— The Great Escape (1963), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), to name a few. I ended up picking randomly from all my options, ending up with Lord of the Flies (1963), written and directed by Peter Brook. I would like to add a disclaimer that I have not read the novel by William Golding, nor have I seen any of the film adaptations.
The story follows a group of young boys evacuating from a war in England by plane. Unfortunately, the aforementioned plane is shot down, leaving 30 of the children— no older than teenagers —stranded on a deserted island. The main character, a middle school-aged boy named Ralph, wakes up on the island and crosses paths with fellow classmates, a group of choir boys, and, most notably, no adults.
When Ralph states his plan to create a civilized society among them while they wait to be rescued, the other boys vote to appoint him as their leader, or “chief.” One boy, Jack, has a knife that they use to make wooden spears. The kids also take the glasses off another boy, which they use to make a signal fire.
Jack and the choir boys dub themselves “hunters,” hunting and killing pigs on the island. In doing so, they accidentally let the signal fire go out just before a plane passes overhead, causing an argument between Ralph and Jack. The boys also claim to have seen a monster emerging from the water—an imaginary creature that Jack becomes violently obsessed with. After more arguments with Ralph, Jack splits off from the group to start a new “tribe.”
While this tribe looks for the imaginary beast, Jack and the other hunters accidentally kill another boy in the dark, causing full chaos between the two groups. In a fight, yet another boy is accidentally killed, causing Ralph to flee into the jungle. Later on, the two boys warn him that Jack intends to hunt and kill him, and the next day, Jack sets most of the island on fire to smoke him out. In the end, as Ralph escapes from Jack and his hunters. Through this, he comes face to face with a Navy officer, who is there to rescue the boys. The officer, staring in disgust, takes in the dirty barbarians these boys have become.
From what I am aware of, this film is an adaptation fairly attached to its source material, the 1954 novel. The idea that violence and chaos are ingrained in the human condition is a major theme of the story, emphasized by presenting it through the actions of innocent children. While the narrative certainly supports this perspective, I’ve always felt that the plot actually suggests something else: that the older boys have learned this behavior from the world around them— a case of “monkey see, monkey do.”
All of the violent, organizational behavior is started by the adolescent boys, not the younger ones. These upper-class British children, escaping their home country in wartime, have been taught through their status, current events, schooling, and history, that they must organize and rule over one another, striking down those who stand against them.
While some of the acting in this film was atrocious, I reminded myself that working with exclusively 30 boys, none older than sixteen, was probably a logistical nightmare. I later found out that none of the boys were professional actors, none of them had read the book, and most of the dialogue was improvised.
Some of the children are honestly difficult to tell apart from one another, but other than that, the story was easy to follow and visually interesting. An added touch I enjoyed was the “prologue,” or the opening credits sequence of establishing shots, which led the viewer into the story. Overall, I gave this film three out of five stars, as it was enjoyable to watch, but certainly not my favorite film— or book.