Savages (1972)

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

So Michael O'Donoghue wound up in this movie...alriiiiiiight!Known as 'Mister Mike', first head writer, and the guy who essentially established the weird part (aired in last 1/2 hr) of Saturday Night LIve, and also co-founder of Natl Lampoon, among many other achievements.A good bio, Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue by Dennis Perrin. Mr Mike was a literary terrorist who had a rare thing, the 'killer instinct'. A lefty, he fought against what he perceived as soft things like New Age, romanticism, and other nicenesses. He was a hip wild man with a brain tumor. An angry man.While the main idea for "Savages" was Ivory/Merchant and the general layout was probably Trow's the dialogue must have been pure Mr Mike. Not a 'complete' movie, but as a presentation of O'Donoghue it's gold. Because of Merchant/Ivory the production was quite good which makes for a paradox—normal-seeming film, but absolutely far out.Literary all the way, O'Donoghue deconstructed the deconstruction (throw a part of another decon in there and you have magic (transcendence)—2+, or three-ish, if you will. Three being the first resolution of the first bifurcation—1 manifesting as phenomenology (polar opposites, 2), creating movement between the two, or change (3). A basic theme in this grand satire of culture/civilization is the domination of masculine over feminine, of ration-only over rational AND irrational together. Of logic-only over logic and illogic together. This is played out masterfully, eg, in the Miramar discussion in the Dinner Party, but runs throughout. Style is used creatively to great effect—style being so misunderstood by almost everyone. Here it is portrayed as a mode or gestalt that holds together long enough to convey a subset of mores, folkways et al. Then it is pitted against another style, all within the scene itself—just like modal jazz. Add to this that the dynamics involved are esoteric and you have the main reason this film is not well understood or appreciated—it would just look like weirdness, however amusing. In fact, most creativity IS modal, which is basic flexibility, freedom of expression. Staying in musical 'keys' is essentially rigidity, like the Well Tempered Clavier of the rigid masculine-dominating West. Move like a Queen in Chess, in any direction—the killer instinct to be sure!All components of literary convention are in play here, even surrealism, which completes the self-referring second deconstruction. It's like 'anti-magic'; everything disappears.....of course, Mike was an angry man. Another very interesting thing is Mike's satiric usage itself—by showing 'Bletology' as 'itself' and thus hogwash, Bletology (occult system of elements as integrated through all of Life, eg, "9 Star Ki" from Japan) is presented in all earnestness to great effect, as though it is real. It is carried obviously too far, but the hogwash effect gets lost in the style experiments going on all over—'it's real'. Like other scenes 'making fun' of these hidden intelligences of Life, such as the damage modern buildings can have magnetically, the effect comes out 'sideways', like the whole sensibility of the film—perhaps normal. Hmmmm...In "The Masks are Off" pool scene exhibiting the 'wearing off' of cultural personas gets really far out, even for this film. Brief aspects of "Vanilla Sky", metaphysically; "The Shining" nr the end where the veil lessens and ALL the ghosts appear—chaos rampant, even bits we're not to understand.You get a Mr Mike 'sampler'; it's a lesson in how to appreciate what would otherwise be discounted as 'weirdness'. Remember, "all the things are like the real things, only here they're very small".Michael O'Donoghue was an angry killer and a creative genius who made beauty. There are (begrudged?) moments here that are all the more so for the immensity of scale, the 'whole world' they take things to task in. Those enemies of, besmirchers of, the precious. They are felled and done away with; not in our life any more. Any who put themselves vulnerable for art are protected, they can count on it even if it doesn't look like it. Thanks, Mike.

Director James Ivory's worst film, an absurd allegory which hopes to juxtapose the different (and yet oh-so-similar) worlds of a primitive culture of half-naked forest savages and a decadent group of sexually-ambiguous high society turnips of the 1920s. The screenplay by George Swift Trow and (of all people) Michael O'Donoghue, from Ivory's story, gives us stock characterizations without any personalities of interest, and the amateurish look of the film--part "Cold Comfort Farm", part D.W. Griffith--is confounding and ridiculous. Social satire needs more than just 'uncommon' common ground, it needs spirit and a dash of wit. Ivory clumps through this menagerie with very little grace or humor, however he is helped by Joe Raposo's (suitably) bizarre music. A curio, nothing more. * from ****

Based upon release dates, I was provided with this version as opposed to the 2007 film of the similar name. Keeping an open-mind, I watched patiently.People will celebrate its oddness of colliding civilizations and languages while also mentioning the threads of overlap in poor behavior in both the 'mudpeople' and the merely dressed better actors - this is not enough to make a good film. To fixate on the eccentricities without considering the cohesive whole does anyone considering spending time with this film a disservice. To start, instead of developing the divide between words and actions, the plot moves forward without leaving the viewer with any motif. Stylistically, not providing moments of quiet with the camera to draw out the characters' inner thoughts makes this picture forgettable. Utterly two-dimensional, I pity Sam Watterson's involvement.There is humor unintentionally created by death and the indifference by the other characters. Amusement is highlighted at the end. The people's hysterical and manic attraction to merge with the jungle once more is laughable. Who knew croquet was so powerful?

Blimey. Well, I saw this years ago, and it's just one of those things that stays with you. Why? Well, here's why: Pythonesque premise meets Merchant-Ivory production values and stylings; weird silent-movie captions; weirdly (and very British) perversity; fresh-as-cress approach and general feeling of a bunch of hugely talented students having a right old lark; mud-caked savages who are, of course, nothing of the sort when you hold them up to typical toff behaviour in civilised society. Like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, you don't want to be watching this (as I was) when you're at home with 'flu: it does tend to make you think you're iller than you are, and maybe hallucinated something weird happening on TV. Altogether brilliant. A one-off.