Is That All There Is?

This is great director Lindsay Anderson's mock documentary on his own daily life: a sort of "portrait of the artist". Of course we get to see the man himself, but along the way he satirises all the cliches of this genre of documentary - domestic disputes (appallingly enacted), parallel montage as political statement, and those "personal moments" such as the director in his bath surrounded by posters of his films and plays. There is naturally, despite his usual sharp-witted fun, a great chance to learn more about him. Particularly poignant is to see him in his last film describing the difficulties such a great director always had finding funding for his anarchic, surrealist visions. I've heard it was this constant struggle that killed him at the realtively young age of 73. It's a shame that the profit motive remains more important than the chance for us to have seen more films from such a wonderful filmmaker.