LORD OF THE FLIES
Peter Brook's film from William Golding's novel
Identification sheet:
1963, Great Britain
Running time: 91 minutes
Direction: Peter Brook
Production: Allen/Hogdon/Two Arts
Sound Track:Raymond Leppard
Main characters:
Jales Aubrey (Ralph), Tom Chapin (Jack), Hugh Edwards (Piggy), Roger Elwin (Roger). Thus, casting just for children since the only adults to play, do so in the last minutes of the film.
Going down to Hell:
The plot of Golding's novel, being it a real best-seller, is kept by Peter Brook. The ideal tropical atmosphere of the beginning turns into a terrifying and unpleasant situation which quickly degenerates into nightmare on the last pages of the book, and the last minutes of the film. Both Brooks and Golding obviously shared the same philosophical conception of the world. Pessimism and misanthropy do materialize.
Golding/Brook and Barrie/Disney, two visions of childhood:
What Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan have in common is that children are stranded all alone in an enclosed space, as it happens to be an island. Without moral authority, whithout sanctions or punishments, Peter Pan's playmates behave like citizens of a country where innocent pleasure rules, where innocent games are every-day chores. Notice that when they play the Indians, they tie and imprison the others but when the game is finished, they release their friends.
On the other hand, William Golding asserts that, left alone, any child (or human being in general) plays the law of the strongest, and thus gets subjected to brutality. Notice the underlying political message at a time when real war was the every-day reality. At the end of the novel, the mariners who land in the island avoid, just in time, the inescapable blood bath that waqs going to happen in this children's community.