If . . .

“Which side will you be on?” asked the ads for Lindsay Anderson’s surrealist dissection of conformity and oppression, metaphorically set in that most brutal of institutions: boarding school. “Don’t speak to us; you’re scum,” scowl the stuffy, well-sodomized senior leaders of College House, cruelly keeping order like true sons of the Establishment. The lackadaisical fantasist Travis (Malcolm McDowell) couldn’t care less about school or leadership; he’s got other things on his mind, like revolution and girls. The seniors’ taunts (“You’re a degenerate, Travis”) barely register, until he’s reprimanded through more traditional, brutal means, an act that may trigger “revolution” after all. A tribute to Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct, If . . . may be set in school, but its metaphors of social control (and how to fight it) reach far beyond, to the barricades of 1968. Special mention goes to If . . .’s Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, whose political satires with Milos Forman (especially Firemen’s Ball) echo throughout this furious work.