Re-viewing "Brewster McCloud"

Watched Brewster McCloud  on TCM last night. Its magic was still there. The first time I saw it was when I was a senior high school student. I thought then that it was spectacular but visually understated considering that it was filmed at the peak of the Flower Power movement, the Beatles, marijuana and LSD, fluorescent posters, black lights, bell bottoms, hipsters, paisley prints, an unprecedented Aubrey Beardsley revival, the London Look, Courreges, Tom Jones, Marianne Faithfull, The Dave Clark Five, and Vogue was dominated by Twiggy, Veroushka, and Penelope Tree.

The film's message holds true for today as it did for its intended generation. It is essentially about the young non-conformist (Bud Cort) who is led by his Anima (Sally Kellerman) to figurative, spiritual freedom only to be hindered by all men's fatal flaw--falling in love with a real human being (Shelley Duvall), becoming grounded, and, as a result, being unable to figuratively fly.

Even as a high school student I was amazed by the casting direction--the performers who were chosen to play key characters actually looked like birds without make-up on: owls, herons, cranes, crows, ravens, you name it. It inspired me to do the same should I have been a director someday, and I began looking at everyone around me and made special note of those who looked like cats and those who looked like dogs.

Brewster McCloud is a tribute to the filmmaker's imagination, a newly-told story about man being placed in a cage by the establishment, and his dream and his attempt to escape it.

Among its many messages, it tells us that:

--even if you manage to escape the establishment, the establishment will go after you, capture you, and strangle you;
--sometimes you may have to strangle society before it strangles you;
--society is comprised of predators;
--the Anima speaks to you only once; and
--life is an illusion.