MovieChat Forums > Withnail and I (1987) Discussion > Allegory for the 60s?

Allegory for the 60s?

posted 8 years ago by DaliParton
2 replies | jump to latest

Towards the end when the stoner guy went on a rant about the end of the decade wasn't too far away and how there would be a lot of refugees it rather heavy-handedly made me think this movie is intended to be an allegory for the end of the 60s and the baby-boomers "growing up." Especially with the way I gets a haircut and basically dumps Withnail with no plans to ever look back again.

I'm not sure what to make about the movie's POV about the 60s - seems like it's saying they were a mess of squalor because that's the way Withnail and I lived, kinda mooching off the wealth of the previous generation (monty) and wasting their potential (Withnail's education).

But the abandonment of Withnail seems like it was meant to be extremely tragic, not something he fully deserved either. So, is it that both the 60s and 70s-80s suck, just in different ways?

[–] Noddy_Comet 8 years ago

It's not just an allegory for the 1960s, but England as a whole. Which is why you have Monty endlessly romanticising his lost youth and Danny bemoaning what he sees as the lost opportunities of the decade.

When Danny talks about a country "coming down from its trip", he is also talking about a country coming down from 500 years of imperial dominance, a country no longer certain about its own identity or where it goes from here.

As the current EU referendum debate shows, it's a discussion that England, and indeed the rest of the UK, is still having.

Make tea, not war. 🌈

[–] stevekaczynski 8 years ago

One interpretation is that Marwood's short haircut at the end is a harbinger of Thatcherism, but that was still nearly a decade away.

"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."