It's been a very loooong time since I've seen this; 12 years or so, I think. It was screened in my very first real writing class in High School.
The actual name of the class was "Term Paper" I think, meaning by the end of the semester we were going to have to compile a seven page or so report on a topic of our choice, with annotated notes and references and what not. Now, even back then, I knew that reading and writing were my strong points as a student, but I still wasn't really looking forward to the final assignment. Now, looking back after college, I would KILL to write a paper as short as seven pages, but back then, that was quite a lot to a kid who was just about to get his driver's license.
Now, I can't remember the exact reason why the teacher showed us this one. It's possible it was just to give us a break, or maybe inspire us. For whatever reason, my initial reaction wasn't exactly thrilled. After all, it was awfully hot in those classrooms, and as I remember I was madly in love with the girl who sat three rows ahead of me, and one seat to the left (she always twitched her nose as she wrote), so needless to say, paying attention to some moldy, out of date, production of a short story that I had never heard of didn't exactly make me want to leap to attention.
The film was an adaptation of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, a story I'm going to assume you've read or at least know about if you've read this, so I won't really go into the plot.
But needless to day, I was drawn in instantly. And although we didn't know what was going to happen in the film, we could all sense that something wasn't right. Why were these people drawing paper from a box? Why didn't some people really look happy about it? What was with that scary old man talking about the "old days." Well, when the ending played out, we were pretty horrified, and rightly so. Like I said, I don't know what lesson teacher was trying to teach us besides the usual comments about the tyranny of tradition and the danger of mob mentality, but I always assumed that what she was trying to impress upon us was not to judge a story before it's been told, and that good writers can suck a reader in before laying in the killing blow.
Personally, as a writer, and as a just for fun critic of horror movies, I took from this adaptation the power of an image unexplained, of a tone of detachment from reality. What made this film so strong was how it just seemed so off kilter from common sense. Sure, growing up in the midwest, me and my fellow students all were very familiar with the images in this film; the fields, the friendly small town folk and their soft patter of "how ya doing" banter, the undercurrent of stab your neighbor in the back gossip, and the commonness of "do this because your dad and his dad did it too" tradition.
But yet, the film doesn't feel "familiar." Maybe it's because so much is left open and unexplained until the horrifying conclusion, but watching the town gather to participate in the lottery, the feeling is one of isolation. Not just from your fellow townsfolk, although I can understand this (sometimes it's just as easier to feel lonely in a small town as it is a big one), but from the outside world. As this film went on, and I started to realize the truth, I just couldn't help but wonder where this town was. Truth is, it may be the only town left on the planet for all I know, surrounded on all sides by endless fields of corn swaying in the breeze. I imagined what I would do if I were there. Could I get away? Could I duck behind a building, and take off running away from town square while everyone else was drawing slips from a box until i reached a road. Would I find anything else? What about the next town over? Is their yearly ritual even more hellish? It's those questions that haunted me most about the story and this presentation of it. I'm continually drawn to movies that take place in a world of their own where all you want to do as a viewer is escape what you see on the screen. Not because of gore of violence or anything so simplistic, but because you just can't bare to see a reality that's too harsh to believe, but too realistic to ignore completely.
I don't know if schools still show films like this anymore. It's possible though. All the thousands of educational films probably will be very slow to get DVD updates, and I'm sure that most school districts will be stuck with VCR's for a long time.
Heck, even as a senior in the mid-90's we were STILL seeing educational films on FILMSTRIPS (the ones where you turned the frames by HAND when you heard the beep), such as one we saw in economics class produced in the early 70's about a girl named LuLu who was learning to save her money to either buy a pink dune buggy, or to blow away on little things (like a KING CRIMSON album, I kid you not!).
So, I hope that somewhere out there this adaptation of The Lottery is still being shown. It captures the desolation, the strangeness, and the tragic sadness of life in a situation where reality becomes unhinged, and all you can do is scream at people to stop, even though they don't listen.
