Designated Mourner

Designated Mourner (95 min., United Kingdom, 1997)

Set in an unnamed country, at a time that could be tomorrow or the day after, THE DESIGNATED MOURNER examines the lives of three characters. Told completely in direct address to the camera, the drama centers around Jack, a charming and clever man whose college study of English literature brought him no particular distinction. Jack finds himself at the center of an intellectual elite, courtesy of his marriage to Judy, whose father, Howard, is a revered poet and thinker held in disfavor by an increasingly repressive regime. As violence spreads throughout the society, and the government cracks down on any and all potential sources of dissent, Jack realizes that the ivory tower his family inhabits has become a prison. In a series of candid, even shocking reminiscences, he recounts his abandonment of a world in which ideas and a compassionate concern for other people were important, and his gradual rebirth as a socially acceptable "lowbrow." As Howard and his kind are systematically destroyed by a society that no longer needs or wants artists, Jack manages to survive, the only one left to mourn a group and a way of life which he both envied and despised.

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