I read about Penda’s Fen in The Dark Side magazine and knew I wouldn’t get to see it unless someone had it up on TH-cam due to its age etc. so thank you!
This is the kind of thing in its intellectual and spiritually subversive ambition that seems so rare - Penda's Fen isn't about pleasing crowds or making coherent sense or even technical accomplishment as it is earnest in its effort to creatively unsettle from right in the middle of things. Speaking more personally, although I grew up in rural Canada and not in prep school, I found myself identifying with the main character in all kinds of ways - the earnestness about being conservative in one's youth in part to protect oneself from the threatening mysteries that allure as much as they loom from beyond, within, and below.
Michael Igoe I'm sorry you didn't understand it, then - like most of David Rudkin's work, it's deeply opposed to tribalism and nationalism (rejecting fetishized patriotism is a key element), and it goes out of its way to point out how Marxism was corrupted by authoritarians. It doesn't really get any more 'left' than that. It's a great film - give it another watch.
1:10:54 "The village is sneered at as something petty. Petty it can be. Yet it works. The scale is human. People can relate there. Man may yet in the nick of time revolt and save himself. "Revolt from the monolith, come back to the village."
You're mistaking Manichaeism for anything dichotomous, when it's specifically about moral binaries. Its use in this film is to contrast restrictive conservative authoritarian traditionalism (which is Manichean) with liberating pagan moral relativism. It uses paganism, an older tradition, to demonstrate the lie of 'that's how it's always been' that conservative traditionalists rely on to preserve hegemonic power structures. I'm not arguing in favor of Marx, necessarily, but this film is awfully kind to him. Further, it expressly denounces the idea of 'essential Britishness' as a sacrosanct and unchanging identity, conflicting with the essence of the Brexit argument. While, of course, authoritarianism can take many forms ideologically, Penda's Fen is making a statement in resistance to traditionalism (a right-wing position) and, in doing so, rejecting the cultural monolith in favor of personal freedom, ie relativism (a left-wing position). It's left-libertarian, if you wanted to map it on 2 axes. "that can't make an argument without invoking scare words like "racism" and "antisemitism" to discredit opposition and shut down discussion" Laughable feigned oppression aside, the primary threat to a free and egalitarian society is fascism - rejecting that is how it survives.
I agree that the film is libertarian-to-left-libertarian. When I was younger so was I, and I would have adored this movie. For its time maybe it was useful in communicating a certain message. But the use of pagan motifs to promote leftist ideals is hopelessly hackneyed at this point and historically inaccurate. It's just a silly New Age conceit we've seen for decades now, to portray ancient pagans as anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal, "in touch with Mother Earth" as the modern feminism would have it, etc. It's a projection of modern-day urbane universalist values onto people who are no longer around to rebuke what they would probably find repulsive about modern values. To the extent PENDA'S FEN does this I definitely see it as flawed. Christianity and egalitarianism/leftism are all manifestations of the same universalist ideology: Where you are from doesn't matter. Roots aren't important. Everyone is equal. If you believe the right ideas, say the right words, do the right rituals, you'll go to heaven or you'll be able to create a heaven on earth (utopia). Oh, and if you don't share these tenets, you're parochial, petty, stupid, evil, etc. From the film: "When a church, any church, goes to war against some older god, it has to call that older god the Devil." Do not be surprised if Brexiters, Trump-supporters in the U.S., right-libertarians or Traditionalists see in this a symbol of what they see as the false god or monolith of globalism attempting to erase their cultural and ethnic identities. For wanting to break from the EU, protect their identity, and preserve their older ways of life, they are called "fascists," "racists," "authoritarians," "restrictive," all these words that are just creative synonyms for evil, because leftists and egalitarians don't like resistance to their ideology either and are perfectly willing to misrepresent and demonize others to get their way. For example they don't bother to specify what exactly is "fascist" or "restrictive" about not wanting one's people to be displaced in their own homelands, but merely claiming that the British ARE a people at all means you're a racist fascist. Fair game, those evil racist fascists. It's false that relativism is necessarily a left-wing position. Leftists may promote "relativism" when they are framing their opponents as jackbooted authoritarians, but when someone doesn't want to join their club and pay their membership fees, suddenly they are not so generous and open-minded. They claim to be open and tolerant of various beliefs and philosophies but seem to become quite shocked and appalled to discover that there ARE other beliefs and philosophies. The wheel never stops turning. "Anti-authoritarians" later wake up to discover they are the authorities, and suddenly their underdog rebel narratives and rhetoric ironically apply more smoothly to those who've come reject THEIR hegemony. Traditionalism of an immature sort (like Stephen's naive nationalism in the earlier parts of the film) is Manichaean and restrictive, because it's blind to certain realities, because it lacks experience. This is part of the beauty of the film as a coming-of-age story. Almost all of the adult authority figures and characters who influence Stephen in the film (his father and mother, his teacher, the writer/farmer, Elgar the composer, Penda) are quite aware of the lie of "that's how it's always been," because they are not children like him; they've lived long enough to witness change, to be surprised, to have regrets. Yet none of them would say there is no such thing as “Britishness,” on the contrary it seems to me they realize that British is as British does, that it’s a reality to be lived and worked through. They do not force Stephen to follow their example, they leave him the task of figuring out who and what he is and what he will do. The only characters that represent something to be rejected, the Christian couple he idolized who later meet him on the hill, represent his former immature Manichaean views and really only exist in his imagination. So when it's time to reject them, he does. PENDA'S FEN deserves more credit for showing how the preservation of culture and tradition requires digesting contradictory elements of life, enduring the burdens and alienating experiences to eventually come out as a representative or leader of one’s people. King Penda is not some free-floating platonic egalitarian principle, his bones are in the soil of a certain land, and his blood flows in Stephen’s veins. He represents tradition and identity as such, in all their transience and complication. Christianity and nationalism are “new churches,” sure. But so is the EU. So are liberalism and egalitarianism. So is the global “multicultural” monoculture being pushed by so-called leftism and libertarianism, the Marxian “anti-racists.” And those are just derivatives of the Judeo-Christian monolith anyway. It is they who truly believe things must always stay the same.
Vielen dank, @salk alints. You know, I wuzz, yes, past tense, friends with that daemonic fellow, but, oh well, I had to unfriend him, though; too frequent were his visitations, you know, YOU know, Incubi being how they are and all. Cheers, thanks for the time stamp linkage, and be(a)st wishes.
The man in the intro with the yellow t-shirt..."I'll be on a television program. What should I wear?" "Have you got anything tight and banana coloured?" "Why, yes. Yes, I do."
BWHAHAHAHA HILARIOUS ,I think he ņ looks like a banana popsicle. I remember mum getting a box for a treat way way back in the day. No-one liked the yellow and green ones so I always got the most. Lololol My stupid cousins , weird jealous little boys they were,would sneak in freezer and break them off stick or managed to do something to them to make me upset....lolol I always found revenge tho..I tattled on them for other stuff. Ahhh memories ..sorry for bugging you with my silly story ....
All apparently with bad 70's color, caused by the lack of silver nitrate due to one of the many commodities shortages caused by ill-conceived wage and price controls in 1971 and 1972 that distorted markets.
A lost classic, a bit dated in terms of acting, directing & dialogue, but once you get past it then it pulls you in. It feels with age old issues of growing up while feeling you're different & misunderstood......echoed decades later in Harry Potter.....it has especial undertones now because so many of the mythology is known to me whereas the first time I saw it the subject matter was unknown.
@@adeyinkabrasil4426 I apologize if I dissapointed you in some way but my message still stands that watching it without subtitles even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they're actually saying, had collected sufficient impressions to identify the main points. although a subtitle would have helped me understand a lot more better but yea english isn't my first language so there's that lol
A good point. Watching it for about the fifth time and this time the sexual repression theme strikes me as more powerful than any sociopolitical/religious ones.
The writer was gay and all his plays/screenplays where about LGBT people. But you REALLY dont need that information to know this character is gay, just common sense
Typical socalist communist behavior quoteing directly from the book of mao on cultural terrorism by calling everyone rascist when they don't agree with your lil red book you commie bastard! !
@@bigbearfuzzums7027 hey man, you sound deranged and you should probably relax a little before your grandkids stop answering your texts. for anyone wondering what TheBrooklynDodger meant, I took a cursory glance at the channel and immediately saw a half hour of "zionist cabal" new world order nazi propaganda. really horrible, indefensible stuff. so i guess call me a commie bastard too, i'm not a fan of nazis either. it strikes me as funny that a half hour of nazi propaganda painting jews as evil overlords masterminding the destruction of freedom is fine to chuds like this guy, but merely calling it "unoriginal and racist" (a vast understatement) is apparently CULTURAL TERRORISM. unbelievable brain worms these right wing keyboard warriors have.
It was suppressed because it is garbage. I watched it in 1974 and thought it was rubbish, boring, and slow moving. Watching it again, my opinion has not changed. It is boring and so slow moving as to be almost intolerable-like treacle. And I know a lot about Penda...... For an Indian growing up in the UK, during the most racist period for people of color in the UK, it was, and remains, deeply irrelevant. Huge thumbs down.
And the idiot of a journalist, who thinks he is so "out there" and unconventional in his thinking-picking up every ludicrous conspiracy theory-wittering on about protecting Mother Earth, yet finding time to micromanage his wife and tell her off for holding a kitten too long because "it isn't a child". Ahhh.. the childlike woman of the 1960s and 70s, obedient, malleable, and doing what her old man tells her down to the most trivial level, like holding a kitten! Maybe if he was actually doing his job she would have had a child to hold. But no...he is too busy with "important" stuff with global implications!! What an obnoxious, pretentious ass. I knew a lot of men like that in the 70s. They were pompous bullies and the reason I became a feminist. The way women were portrayed in this film was appalling in 1974 and really weird to watch today. Yet the filmmaker thinks he is Oh so progressive banging on about a gay man coming-out? So much for his stance on changing society. Yes, let's make it better, but only for men. This is one of the many things that ruined this film. The women might have come straight out of "Rosemary's Baby"-go watch Mia Farrow again-she plays a woman with a mental age of ~ 6, which was what was required in the 60s and 70s. Stepford Wives. Pathetic and sad. The villagers are no better than the peasants in my parents' village in India. Ignorant and with a limited viewpoint. Try living with these people some time. I have and it isn't fun. Those "charming" English villages are no better.
@@sandyanarayanswami5708 But the bits of the film you're complaining about are put there deliberately. Your reaction seems to be world-class missing of the point!
![Путин и ПЕСКОВ ждут звонка от ТРАМПА 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sm8iV0SxRHk/mqdefault.jpg)
I read about Penda’s Fen in The Dark Side magazine and knew I wouldn’t get to see it unless someone had it up on TH-cam due to its age etc. so thank you!
IT's now on DVD.
It's now on Bluray.
This is the kind of thing in its intellectual and spiritually subversive ambition that seems so rare - Penda's Fen isn't about pleasing crowds or making coherent sense or even technical accomplishment as it is earnest in its effort to creatively unsettle from right in the middle of things. Speaking more personally, although I grew up in rural Canada and not in prep school, I found myself identifying with the main character in all kinds of ways - the earnestness about being conservative in one's youth in part to protect oneself from the threatening mysteries that allure as much as they loom from beyond, within, and below.
2 minutes and I can already tell this movie is going to be good. Thank you channel Channel 4. Love from america.
Amazing film. Best stumbled upon ever.
“We’re not people anymore with eyes to see. We’re blind, gaping holes”
An absolutely sublime piece of film-making.
Michael Igoe
I'm sorry you didn't understand it, then - like most of David Rudkin's work, it's deeply opposed to tribalism and nationalism (rejecting fetishized patriotism is a key element), and it goes out of its way to point out how Marxism was corrupted by authoritarians. It doesn't really get any more 'left' than that. It's a great film - give it another watch.
Morgan King Fair enough. Will do.
1:10:54 "The village is sneered at as something petty. Petty it can be. Yet it works. The scale is human. People can relate there. Man may yet in the nick of time revolt and save himself.
"Revolt from the monolith, come back to the village."
You're mistaking Manichaeism for anything dichotomous, when it's specifically about moral binaries. Its use in this film is to contrast restrictive conservative authoritarian traditionalism (which is Manichean) with liberating pagan moral relativism. It uses paganism, an older tradition, to demonstrate the lie of 'that's how it's always been' that conservative traditionalists rely on to preserve hegemonic power structures.
I'm not arguing in favor of Marx, necessarily, but this film is awfully kind to him. Further, it expressly denounces the idea of 'essential Britishness' as a sacrosanct and unchanging identity, conflicting with the essence of the Brexit argument. While, of course, authoritarianism can take many forms ideologically, Penda's Fen is making a statement in resistance to traditionalism (a right-wing position) and, in doing so, rejecting the cultural monolith in favor of personal freedom, ie relativism (a left-wing position). It's left-libertarian, if you wanted to map it on 2 axes.
"that can't make an argument without invoking scare words like "racism" and "antisemitism" to discredit opposition and shut down discussion"
Laughable feigned oppression aside, the primary threat to a free and egalitarian society is fascism - rejecting that is how it survives.
I agree that the film is libertarian-to-left-libertarian. When I was younger so was I, and I would have adored this movie. For its time maybe it was useful in communicating a certain message. But the use of pagan motifs to promote leftist ideals is hopelessly hackneyed at this point and historically inaccurate. It's just a silly New Age conceit we've seen for decades now, to portray ancient pagans as anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal, "in touch with Mother Earth" as the modern feminism would have it, etc. It's a projection of modern-day urbane universalist values onto people who are no longer around to rebuke what they would probably find repulsive about modern values. To the extent PENDA'S FEN does this I definitely see it as flawed.
Christianity and egalitarianism/leftism are all manifestations of the same universalist ideology: Where you are from doesn't matter. Roots aren't important. Everyone is equal. If you believe the right ideas, say the right words, do the right rituals, you'll go to heaven or you'll be able to create a heaven on earth (utopia). Oh, and if you don't share these tenets, you're parochial, petty, stupid, evil, etc.
From the film: "When a church, any church, goes to war against some older god, it has to call that older god the Devil." Do not be surprised if Brexiters, Trump-supporters in the U.S., right-libertarians or Traditionalists see in this a symbol of what they see as the false god or monolith of globalism attempting to erase their cultural and ethnic identities. For wanting to break from the EU, protect their identity, and preserve their older ways of life, they are called "fascists," "racists," "authoritarians," "restrictive," all these words that are just creative synonyms for evil, because leftists and egalitarians don't like resistance to their ideology either and are perfectly willing to misrepresent and demonize others to get their way. For example they don't bother to specify what exactly is "fascist" or "restrictive" about not wanting one's people to be displaced in their own homelands, but merely claiming that the British ARE a people at all means you're a racist fascist. Fair game, those evil racist fascists.
It's false that relativism is necessarily a left-wing position. Leftists may promote "relativism" when they are framing their opponents as jackbooted authoritarians, but when someone doesn't want to join their club and pay their membership fees, suddenly they are not so generous and open-minded. They claim to be open and tolerant of various beliefs and philosophies but seem to become quite shocked and appalled to discover that there ARE other beliefs and philosophies. The wheel never stops turning. "Anti-authoritarians" later wake up to discover they are the authorities, and suddenly their underdog rebel narratives and rhetoric ironically apply more smoothly to those who've come reject THEIR hegemony.
Traditionalism of an immature sort (like Stephen's naive nationalism in the earlier parts of the film) is Manichaean and restrictive, because it's blind to certain realities, because it lacks experience. This is part of the beauty of the film as a coming-of-age story. Almost all of the adult authority figures and characters who influence Stephen in the film (his father and mother, his teacher, the writer/farmer, Elgar the composer, Penda) are quite aware of the lie of "that's how it's always been," because they are not children like him; they've lived long enough to witness change, to be surprised, to have regrets. Yet none of them would say there is no such thing as “Britishness,” on the contrary it seems to me they realize that British is as British does, that it’s a reality to be lived and worked through. They do not force Stephen to follow their example, they leave him the task of figuring out who and what he is and what he will do. The only characters that represent something to be rejected, the Christian couple he idolized who later meet him on the hill, represent his former immature Manichaean views and really only exist in his imagination. So when it's time to reject them, he does.
PENDA'S FEN deserves more credit for showing how the preservation of culture and tradition requires digesting contradictory elements of life, enduring the burdens and alienating experiences to eventually come out as a representative or leader of one’s people. King Penda is not some free-floating platonic egalitarian principle, his bones are in the soil of a certain land, and his blood flows in Stephen’s veins. He represents tradition and identity as such, in all their transience and complication.
Christianity and nationalism are “new churches,” sure. But so is the EU. So are liberalism and egalitarianism. So is the global “multicultural” monoculture being pushed by so-called leftism and libertarianism, the Marxian “anti-racists.” And those are just derivatives of the Judeo-Christian monolith anyway. It is they who truly believe things must always stay the same.
30:34 you're welcome.
Thank you!
that fucking costume good lord
Thank you, my hops
Horrifying
Vielen dank, @salk alints. You know, I wuzz, yes, past tense, friends with that daemonic fellow, but, oh well, I had to unfriend him, though; too frequent were his visitations, you know, YOU know, Incubi being how they are and all. Cheers, thanks for the time stamp linkage, and be(a)st wishes.
Thanks so much for putting this up !
love this film so much.
The man in the intro with the yellow t-shirt..."I'll be on a television program. What should I wear?"
"Have you got anything tight and banana coloured?"
"Why, yes. Yes, I do."
BWHAHAHAHA HILARIOUS ,I think he ņ looks like a banana popsicle. I remember mum getting a box for a treat way way back in the day.
No-one liked the yellow and green ones so I always got the most. Lololol My stupid cousins , weird jealous little boys they were,would sneak in freezer and break them off stick or managed to do something to them to make me upset....lolol I always found revenge tho..I tattled on them for other stuff. Ahhh memories ..sorry for bugging you with my silly story ....
KING. A fantastic look.
All apparently with bad 70's color, caused by the lack of silver nitrate due to one of the many commodities shortages caused by ill-conceived wage and price controls in 1971 and 1972 that distorted markets.
Interesting
Now after years of Thatcherism not only films but the entire country looks like it's in bad colour
Yes, it needs HDR.
Thanks for uploading this. I believe that I sort of understood it ,but at the same time am not really sure if I got all of it.
Does anyone know where to get the script online?
how did they get quentin tarantino in this movie?
Not sure what to make of it. Any insight?
Christianity suppressing polytheism manifests the gods of thought to one true in theology.
Misterioso Thank you. I concur
+Misterioso Now that's what I call concise communication.
“Somewhere there the land is hollow”
“What is it, hidden beneath this shell of lovely earth?”
REVOLT FROM THE MONOLITH
COME BACK TO THE VILLAGE
This is what being gay feels like 29:00
this is next level.
Interesting. Definitely needs to be re-viewed and thought about. Thanks for posting!
what does David Rudkin say at the very beginning? "This is XXX county". Sounds like Tree-Choir.
absolutely love this film
Close! It's Three Choir country. The cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford run annual choir festivals.
The man in the village hall talking about strikers looks just like Allan Clarke, lead singer of The Hollies
This was directed by a man called Alan Clarke
@@shaneclifford1585 a well-known striker...
I'm interested in your opinions. Waiting to tell untill someone's 18, that they are adopted.
30:33 The Infamous Moment. Wow this is cheesier than I thought it would be
A lost classic, a bit dated in terms of acting, directing & dialogue, but once you get past it then it pulls you in. It feels with age old issues of growing up while feeling you're different & misunderstood......echoed decades later in Harry Potter.....it has especial undertones now because so many of the mythology is known to me whereas the first time I saw it the subject matter was unknown.
1:26:30 All hail the King !
good but this desperately needs subtitles
true. it's so hard to emphasize to what they were saying😔
@@seshiria_4290 maybe because you can't speak english?
@@Andrei_Suckoffsky I do :)
@@seshiria_4290 if you did, you wouldn’t be using the word “emphasize” incorrectly.
@@adeyinkabrasil4426 I apologize if I dissapointed you in some way but my message still stands that watching it without subtitles even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they're actually saying, had collected sufficient impressions to identify the main points. although a subtitle would have helped me understand a lot more better but yea english isn't my first language so there's that lol
Parents complaining because the son is playing ELGAR too loud...Oh, man! If they could skip forward 50 years🤣
Confused but charming.
non of you basement dwellers caught on the main character is gay? Literally rhe whole movie is about him coming out as gay
A good point. Watching it for about the fifth time and this time the sexual repression theme strikes me as more powerful than any sociopolitical/religious ones.
the part where he says "my sex is mixed,, I am woman and man" didnt do it for you?
How is that a statement of being gay ? Of being androgynous maybe . But not being gay.
Projection much? Eh x y?
The writer was gay and all his plays/screenplays where about LGBT people. But you REALLY dont need that information to know this character is gay, just common sense
А есть фильм на русском ?
Interesting
The Wicker Man if it was a coming-of-age drama.
I thought the same
A wonderful, disturbing, intelligent film. It's a shame it had to be posted by such a shamelessly unoriginal, racist account - but then, that's 2019.
Typical socalist communist behavior quoteing directly from the book of mao on cultural terrorism by calling everyone rascist when they don't agree with your lil red book you commie bastard! !
@@bigbearfuzzums7027 At least Mao's cultural revolution died with his death. SJW's seem to have nine lives.
Crazy how none of them seem to catch on to how explicitly gay and anticapitalist it is. Like it's literally right there lol.
@@bigbearfuzzums7027 Learn proper grammar. After that, take a long walk outside.
@@bigbearfuzzums7027 hey man, you sound deranged and you should probably relax a little before your grandkids stop answering your texts.
for anyone wondering what TheBrooklynDodger meant, I took a cursory glance at the channel and immediately saw a half hour of "zionist cabal" new world order nazi propaganda. really horrible, indefensible stuff. so i guess call me a commie bastard too, i'm not a fan of nazis either. it strikes me as funny that a half hour of nazi propaganda painting jews as evil overlords masterminding the destruction of freedom is fine to chuds like this guy, but merely calling it "unoriginal and racist" (a vast understatement) is apparently CULTURAL TERRORISM. unbelievable brain worms these right wing keyboard warriors have.
Heard a lot about this wasn`t overly impressed.Must be a english thing
@7 Haunted Days Fair enough.Must have to be a believer
Nice description LMAO
That pathetic 70's hair!
It was suppressed because it is garbage. I watched it in 1974 and thought it was rubbish, boring, and slow moving. Watching it again, my opinion has not changed. It is boring and so slow moving as to be almost intolerable-like treacle. And I know a lot about Penda...... For an Indian growing up in the UK, during the most racist period for people of color in the UK, it was, and remains, deeply irrelevant. Huge thumbs down.
And the idiot of a journalist, who thinks he is so "out there" and unconventional in his thinking-picking up every ludicrous conspiracy theory-wittering on about protecting Mother Earth, yet finding time to micromanage his wife and tell her off for holding a kitten too long because "it isn't a child". Ahhh.. the childlike woman of the 1960s and 70s, obedient, malleable, and doing what her old man tells her down to the most trivial level, like holding a kitten! Maybe if he was actually doing his job she would have had a child to hold. But no...he is too busy with "important" stuff with global implications!! What an obnoxious, pretentious ass. I knew a lot of men like that in the 70s. They were pompous bullies and the reason I became a feminist.
The way women were portrayed in this film was appalling in 1974 and really weird to watch today. Yet the filmmaker thinks he is Oh so progressive banging on about a gay man coming-out? So much for his stance on changing society. Yes, let's make it better, but only for men. This is one of the many things that ruined this film. The women might have come straight out of "Rosemary's Baby"-go watch Mia Farrow again-she plays a woman with a mental age of ~ 6, which was what was required in the 60s and 70s. Stepford Wives. Pathetic and sad.
The villagers are no better than the peasants in my parents' village in India. Ignorant and with a limited viewpoint. Try living with these people some time. I have and it isn't fun. Those "charming" English villages are no better.
If it was so bad then why didn’t you go back?
@@computerfraudandabuseactof43 Good point, fuck you Sandya.
If you found it to be so intolerably boring, slow moving and rubbish in 1974, why did you feel the need to watch it again? Some kind of masochism?
@@sandyanarayanswami5708 But the bits of the film you're complaining about are put there deliberately. Your reaction seems to be world-class missing of the point!
badly acted, filmed, scripted, and directed - very poor
Totally agree. Rubbish from start to finish. I thought so in 1974 and I still think so. It has "film student" written all over it.
@@sandyanarayanswami5708 support Brexit !!
@@brianhammer5107 Sorry, Brexit is for idiots.
@@sandyanarayanswami5708 Um, no, but thanks for playing.