The Ruling Class is a sprawling film maudit. Its success relies somewhat on the sympathies of audiences, it takes aim at the crassness of the hereditary class system in the UK. The 99% simply agree with the filmmakers, and much is therefore forgiven or overlooked. It has a main point that a schizophrenic lord's ravings are indistinguishable from various cultural narratives. Sanity is described simply as going with the flow of your class milieu. This distinctly overlong, poorly edited and over-lit movie, is divided into two halves, in the first mad Jack, Earl of Gurney, believes he is God, in the second, Jack the Ripper.
Major complaints for me are firstly that the musical numbers in the film are meritless, every single one of them, and indeed the movie does not work as a musical at all; there are also graphic scenes of animal torture (a terrified rodent is injected by a syringe, and a wire is inserted into the brain of the same); finally the movie suffers from didacticism, it tells you things rather than showing them to you.
There's a phrase from one of the Psalms, "Beatus vir, qui timet Dominum." "Happy the man, who fears the Lord". Bad Jack, lectures on the need to fear the law, and to fear God. Good Jack lectures on the need to love everyone, My take is "Happy the person, who fears themself".
50 years on and the class system is still with us though far more camouflaged.
Major complaints for me are firstly that the musical numbers in the film are meritless, every single one of them, and indeed the movie does not work as a musical at all; there are also graphic scenes of animal torture (a terrified rodent is injected by a syringe, and a wire is inserted into the brain of the same); finally the movie suffers from didacticism, it tells you things rather than showing them to you.
There's a phrase from one of the Psalms, "Beatus vir, qui timet Dominum." "Happy the man, who fears the Lord". Bad Jack, lectures on the need to fear the law, and to fear God. Good Jack lectures on the need to love everyone, My take is "Happy the person, who fears themself".
50 years on and the class system is still with us though far more camouflaged.