Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Never Apologise: A Personal Visit with Lindsay Anderson (2006)
Director: Mike Kaplan
Movie review
From Time Out London
The title arose from a spat that Lindsay Anderson once had with Alan Bates and for which he stubbornly refused to say sorry, but an even more appropriate tag for this musing on Anderson’s life and work by his friend Malcolm McDowell may have been ‘Surrounded By Fucking Idiots’, which the director of ‘This Sporting Life’ and ‘If…’ apparently once chose as his fantasy epitaph during a lunch with British film critics. It’s one of the many anecdotes that McDowell, Anderson’s collaborator on ‘If…’ and ‘O Lucky Man!’, recounts in this documentary which is a record of a stage tribute to his ‘mentor’ that McDowell first delivered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2004.
One imagines that Anderson himself, who died in 1994, may have found the very idea of this film ‘tiresome’, ‘suburban’ and ‘bourgeois’ – accusations attributed to him several times by McDowell, whether remembering his attitude to other filmmakers or home decoration. Yet Anderson may also have been rightly moved by the tenderness of McDowell’s many well-expressed recollections, which recount their work together and other aspects of Anderson’s life, such as his celibacy, his meeting with John Ford on the latter’s death bed, his friendship with the tragic Welsh actress Rachel Roberts, and his divisions of films between the ‘mini’ – meaning unimportant, rubbish, realist, not interesting, not layered – and the ‘epic’ – meaning layered, important and poetic. Brushing aside thoughts about what future this sort of filmed stand-up has in the age of the podcast, this warm film is the product of the loving memories of a friend. Sometimes the rhetoric inevitably tips into the arena of the luvvie but McDowell’s performance remains captivating and Anderson’s life a genuine fascination. A mini-epic, as he may not have said.
Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 1941: October 31-November 6
Cast & crew
Director: Mike Kaplan
Producer: Mike Kaplan, Malcolm McDowell, Peter Crane
With: Malcolm McDowell
Genre(s): Documentaries
Rated: 15
Duration: 112 mins
UK Release: Nov 2 2007
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
The 10 worst date movies
Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made
Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films
Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas
10 unlikely badboy biopics
Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects
Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'
The first-time director of the brilliant new thriller discusses religious cults and robot boxing
Has David Cronenberg turned tame?
Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?
Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day
Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing







What do you think?
Post your review now