...not because the book is so much better, but rather because one always gets more out of a book than out of any movie rendition of it. (The exception that proves the rule being "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"--not better than the book, but definitively it's equal.) So, I just watched the movie, and cannot recommend it highly enough. Go into it with the question of what makes us human, what civilization is, and how we deal with our need for social living, and then consider ALL sides of the matter before making a judgment.
The movie making itself isn't all that perfect. But the way in which Brook present's the story--as a tableaux without a message, leaving it for us to decide--more than redeems any inconsistencies in film technique or the acting.
Someone above mentioned that it is hard to talk about the movie without talking about the story itself. And that is true. So, that said, I just wanted to comment that I'm disappointed in what seems to me to be a rather facile interpretation of Golding's work that seems prevalent amongst the comments--the easy assignment of virtue to Ralph and Piggy and savagery to Jack and his followers. Commenters keep noting a "reversion". The conch represents civilization and democracy, Jack (or, more properly, the boar's head) totalitarianism and barbarism.
But the question goes a bit deeper than that. Ralph starts off with the power and the trust. But his response to the situation the kids find themselves in is a passive one--he wants to build a fire and wait to be rescued. Jack is described as power hungry a number of times in comments, but the readers fail to note that if not by show of hands the first time, by show of feet the second time the kids withdraw the power from Ralph--i.e., the scene in which he says "what if I blow it and they don't come" when Piggy tells him to summon the kids with the conch. And the ultimate question is not about whether Jack is power hungry and Ralph virtuous, but rather why the children chose to follow Jack and not Ralph.
THe answer is very clear. Jack was a stronger leader than Ralph. Ralph wanted to be rescued--Jack sought to deal with the situation as it was. Materially, Jack was able to provide meat to the kids because he was able to arm and discipline his choir boys. Socially, Jack was able to forge a bond with his followers, his "tribe", that gave them a reason to accept his leadership, while Ralph could only offer leadership based on a momentary common consensus. And in the end, Jack could protect his followers, Ralph could not. It is significant that the two boys with Ralph in the scene mentioned above are Simon and Piggy--in the end, in allying themselves with him, they end up dying, while Roger, the first to desert to Jack, survives.
To see Golding's story as a reversion to savagery misses, I think, the whole point. It was not a reversion the boys underwent, but, rather, an adaptation to the circumstances in which they found themselves. They didn't go naked because they were suddenly nothing but monkeys, they went naked because it was the better adaptation to the environment in which they found themselves. They didn't accept Jack because they had become uncivilized, they accepted Jack because under the circumstances, he offered more in terms of social utility than Ralph could.
It is understanding this that we understand how totalitarian regimes do take power--that people don't adopt them because they've reverted to savagery, but rather that an extremity of circumstances compels certain behaviors in order to survive. Jack's power wouldn't have been possible without his choirboys armed with spears, but neither would the meat he brought his tribe.
The respective prime followers of Ralph and Jack, Piggy and Roger, are very interesting in that they represent the conflicting elements in human civilization, that to protect the weak and that to hurt it. Intelligence is perceived as weak in a society on the edge because its rewards are not reaped immediately, Raplh's glasses can start a fire, but the kids are still at the mercy of someone seeing it; while brute strength and violence does, as in the killing of the pig, reap immediate rewards.
It concerns me that this novel is being taught improperly in schools, as an allegory for good vs. evil rather than as testamentary to the human condition and the choices we make in order to survive. Golding's work is a brilliant examination not of human morality, but of human society and its many layers, and it is a shame to reduce to "Ralph good, Jack bad" Manichean dichotomy.
The movie making itself isn't all that perfect. But the way in which Brook present's the story--as a tableaux without a message, leaving it for us to decide--more than redeems any inconsistencies in film technique or the acting.
Someone above mentioned that it is hard to talk about the movie without talking about the story itself. And that is true. So, that said, I just wanted to comment that I'm disappointed in what seems to me to be a rather facile interpretation of Golding's work that seems prevalent amongst the comments--the easy assignment of virtue to Ralph and Piggy and savagery to Jack and his followers. Commenters keep noting a "reversion". The conch represents civilization and democracy, Jack (or, more properly, the boar's head) totalitarianism and barbarism.
But the question goes a bit deeper than that. Ralph starts off with the power and the trust. But his response to the situation the kids find themselves in is a passive one--he wants to build a fire and wait to be rescued. Jack is described as power hungry a number of times in comments, but the readers fail to note that if not by show of hands the first time, by show of feet the second time the kids withdraw the power from Ralph--i.e., the scene in which he says "what if I blow it and they don't come" when Piggy tells him to summon the kids with the conch. And the ultimate question is not about whether Jack is power hungry and Ralph virtuous, but rather why the children chose to follow Jack and not Ralph.
THe answer is very clear. Jack was a stronger leader than Ralph. Ralph wanted to be rescued--Jack sought to deal with the situation as it was. Materially, Jack was able to provide meat to the kids because he was able to arm and discipline his choir boys. Socially, Jack was able to forge a bond with his followers, his "tribe", that gave them a reason to accept his leadership, while Ralph could only offer leadership based on a momentary common consensus. And in the end, Jack could protect his followers, Ralph could not. It is significant that the two boys with Ralph in the scene mentioned above are Simon and Piggy--in the end, in allying themselves with him, they end up dying, while Roger, the first to desert to Jack, survives.
To see Golding's story as a reversion to savagery misses, I think, the whole point. It was not a reversion the boys underwent, but, rather, an adaptation to the circumstances in which they found themselves. They didn't go naked because they were suddenly nothing but monkeys, they went naked because it was the better adaptation to the environment in which they found themselves. They didn't accept Jack because they had become uncivilized, they accepted Jack because under the circumstances, he offered more in terms of social utility than Ralph could.
It is understanding this that we understand how totalitarian regimes do take power--that people don't adopt them because they've reverted to savagery, but rather that an extremity of circumstances compels certain behaviors in order to survive. Jack's power wouldn't have been possible without his choirboys armed with spears, but neither would the meat he brought his tribe.
The respective prime followers of Ralph and Jack, Piggy and Roger, are very interesting in that they represent the conflicting elements in human civilization, that to protect the weak and that to hurt it. Intelligence is perceived as weak in a society on the edge because its rewards are not reaped immediately, Raplh's glasses can start a fire, but the kids are still at the mercy of someone seeing it; while brute strength and violence does, as in the killing of the pig, reap immediate rewards.
It concerns me that this novel is being taught improperly in schools, as an allegory for good vs. evil rather than as testamentary to the human condition and the choices we make in order to survive. Golding's work is a brilliant examination not of human morality, but of human society and its many layers, and it is a shame to reduce to "Ralph good, Jack bad" Manichean dichotomy.