Petulia

Like Pauline Kael, I didn’t enjoy Petulia. To me, the film appeared to be trying too hard. The director, Richard Lester, told the stories of Petulia’s and Archie’s life through flashbacks and random shots of the medical scenes and 60’s Rock and Roll. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out what the hell Lester was trying to say and ended up feeling like his technique was meant to shock more than to actually say something. I don’t mean that these scenes were completely pointless, but I thought that Lester took himself too seriously. I felt that instead of having an idea and thinking of the most effective and creative way to portray it through film, Lester focused instead on being different and stunning the audience with gore, spazzy flashbacks and images of things that appear to contrast completely. But let me just talk about what value I could construe from the film.
Petulia seemed to be a portrait of the 1960s and the rejection of conformity in the upper class. While, I think most people think of the 1960s as an exciting and turbulent time for grassroots movements and the youth, Lester chose to portray the rebellion and dissatisfaction with conformity in wealthy married adults. The main character, Archie, is a doctor who is going through a divorce. His wife appears to be completely blameless, and she even admits her confusion of their divorce to Archie: “It’s a puzzle to me. We never fought” (00:28:01) Archie’s behavior truly is puzzling in that his old life seemed to be ideal (at least in the photographs of their family trips to Big Sur), yet he rejects it for a broken sad life of confusion and loneliness. Archie must watch his fatherly role be replaced by his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. On his trip to Alcatraz with his two sons, Archie attempts to have an influence in their life and tries to teach them some facts about Alcatraz. However, his attempts prove to be futile when his son says that “Warren told [him] last week” and Lester pairs this line with a flashback of the Warren repeating the same fact (00:48:23) Even the his little time he has with his two sons is filled with references to their mom’s boyfriend, and he seems to has lost his role as father. All of his friends can’t quite understand why Archie is choosing this life of unhappiness over his previous life of seemingly marital bliss. When Archie’s friend asked about why he left, Archie responds by saying “I just want to feel something” (00:26:12). This rejection of the social norm and the search for real feeling is a major theme in the 1960s.
Lester equates Archie’s search for truth and desire to “feel something” with the Rock and Roll movement. Throughout the entire film, Lester includes flashbacks of dimly lighted psychedelic scenes of Rock and Roll music and dancing. Although Rock and Roll was meant to be a rejection of the falsehood of society, Lester portrays these scenes as dark and artificial (00:02:14). It appears that even the rejection of falsehood is synthetic and isn’t genuine. Falsehood is a major theme in the film and the characters continually make references to film and commercials, thus illustrating their separation from reality. When Petulia crazily says to Archie, “I’m going to marry you,” he responds casually by saying “it is the Pepsi generation” (00:13:10). Archie is making a reference to Pepsi’s advertising campaign which portrayed Pepsi as a young hip drink for the youth. Essentially, Archie is saying that anything can happen, times are changing, yet he chooses to express this idea by referring to an advertising slogan. By mentioning a commercial, Lester demonstrates that instead of rejecting past ideas of conformity, the new generation is just following a different kind of artificial conformity based on advertisements and television which promote rebellion and youth.