Schooldays ? Happiest days of our lives ? Don't make me laugh . Schooldays are the days of being inducted in to a world of cruel unrelenting fascism by adults , who are all uniformly authoritarian oppressors , parents teachers , oppressors all . Almost as bad is the fascism from ones peers . Being the victim of the social Darwinism of the school bully and being the victim of social exclusion by your peers for being an outsider . The coming of age in to the adult and the leaving of school is the closest any of us will get to Utopia , where free thought and individuality finally comes in to being
This BBC teleplay written by Arthur Ellis taps in to the psyche of the repressed inverted fascist mind of childhood . As Orwell said " only those who have lived under fascism or those who recognise a fascist streak in themselves truly understand fascism " and he's correct. The story revolves around Edgar an eleven year old boy who fed up with the injustice children have to suffer at the hands of adults and other children decides to set up a gang along the lines of a police force inspired by the founder of parliamentary democracy Oliver Cromwell
You have to watch THE POLICE with a certain mind set . My reading of the film is that's it not meant to be taken literally , more in the vein of poetic allegory , the more the police fight against injustice and oppression the more repressive they become themselves . If you're watching this thinking it's a straight drama without an emphasis on subtext it'll be spoiled because Edgar is too far knowing for someone of his years etc so it's best to give it a bit of leeway
There are a couple of elements that do stop it from being classic hard hitting drama and one is that unfortunately something that can't be helped - child actors . None of them are particularly bad but there's a metaphysical feature to child characters that often irritates an adult audience and the cast here are no different . Secondly even giving the plotting some freedom because of the poetic nature of the storytelling the climax relies on unlikely occurrences that might have you shaking your head thinking yeah right which spoils the overall quality of the story
This BBC teleplay written by Arthur Ellis taps in to the psyche of the repressed inverted fascist mind of childhood . As Orwell said " only those who have lived under fascism or those who recognise a fascist streak in themselves truly understand fascism " and he's correct. The story revolves around Edgar an eleven year old boy who fed up with the injustice children have to suffer at the hands of adults and other children decides to set up a gang along the lines of a police force inspired by the founder of parliamentary democracy Oliver Cromwell
You have to watch THE POLICE with a certain mind set . My reading of the film is that's it not meant to be taken literally , more in the vein of poetic allegory , the more the police fight against injustice and oppression the more repressive they become themselves . If you're watching this thinking it's a straight drama without an emphasis on subtext it'll be spoiled because Edgar is too far knowing for someone of his years etc so it's best to give it a bit of leeway
There are a couple of elements that do stop it from being classic hard hitting drama and one is that unfortunately something that can't be helped - child actors . None of them are particularly bad but there's a metaphysical feature to child characters that often irritates an adult audience and the cast here are no different . Secondly even giving the plotting some freedom because of the poetic nature of the storytelling the climax relies on unlikely occurrences that might have you shaking your head thinking yeah right which spoils the overall quality of the story
