A landmark anti-establishment film, If... is conveniently bracketed as a film about the English private school system. As with much of the British New Wave cinema, its general themes of anger, discontent and rebellion lend itself to a rather dubious label of an 'angry young man' flick.  The tragedy of such a classification is that the novelty of its ideas, of fantasy and reality, action and punishment, authority and rebellion, and the inevitability of each reaction to its primary action are lost in the supposed social context.

Mick Travis (ingeniously played by Malcolm McDowell) is instantly established as a rebel when he is introduced on the first day of the winter term, scarf over mouth, concealing a moustache he has grown over the holidays. The microcosm of his reality being the confines of an old English Private School, with the 'whips' appearing as tyrannical figures of authority in a system that is largely depicted as monstrous in its repression of the slightest deviance of behaviour and appearance from conventional norms. He is a non-conformist. "War is the last possible creative act," he says. Mick represents the antagonist dictum that the only possible response to the world is a constant state of rebellion. Anderson also throws in a sub-plot of a new boy, Jute, who seems to underline that the most rigid, unthinking adherents of any system are always the new converts.

One characteristic Anderson shares with his protagonist is the compelling need for images that are both seductive and shocking. The walls of his study covered in pictures cut from magazines and newspapers occupy a significant place. The collage of pictures ranges from pin-up girls to images of war, starvation, opulence and death, arbitrarily dispersed for impact. It depicts a constant implication of a larger reality, greater and more consequent than his own. Mick and his friends seek to experience and experiment with it.  A slash of the wrist, a trickle of blood, self-asphyxiation - their experimentation is always provocative of a response; the more dire, pointed and stinging, the better. The frieze-like collage extends to the actual storyboard, with its interspersed use of monochrome and colour. Given the ambiguity of fantasy and reality, the abrupt changes of colour produces a surreal montage. This is epitomized in the final segment of an armed uprising against the system, which is shot in colour. Unsurprisingly, there was a liberal outcry regarding the way violence is handled in the film and accusations of incitement to rebellion.

The division of the film into 8 sections leaves little room for a conventional plot, making it reminiscent of a documentary. The use of music is efficacious and almost portentous of the final violence. The visual style reflects the mind of Mick as a man in revolt. Overall, an exceptionally well made film that deserves the acclaim it has received over the years.