Many independent films of the 80’s were sarcastic and cynical, but this is the only one I can think of that is as angry as such 50’s works as A Face in the Crowd is 1989’s How to Get Ahead in Advertising. Similar to that picture, the deceptive nature of advertising is a key element. In the older film, it was but one of the many avenues explored. In the ’89 picture, it is the entire focus.
The deceit inherent to the trade is driving Richard E. Grant insane. This star of a top London agency is flailing (often literally) to find the best approach to sell yet another acne treatment which cannot fulfill the claims it makes on the packaging.
Before, he wasn’t bothered that such a product was worthless. In a stellar opening sequence, the camera stays on him as he orbits a conference room, tearing a supermarket client a new one because they don’t know their market like he does. In scathing mockery of them, their customers, and marketing itself, he waxes on how emphasis must be place on each product that it is low in something. Failing that, it should be high in something. The retailer should encourage their ideal customer (which, per the stereotypes of such worlds, is a housewife) to diet, but also to reward herself with a little something, a treat for undertaking that diet. “It’s a vicious, but quite wonderful, cycle.”
This scene sets the tone for the entire work, with everything coming full circle in the final minutes, Grant enthusiastically shouting a diatribe from atop a pedestal on his idyllic and vast country estate, the rays of the setting sun silhouetting him. Commerce will triumph–rationality, conscience and good taste be damned.
That isn’t a spoiler, as this is all clearly a parable. It is inevitable this is the destination to which it is heading. And, when I say “heading”, the central conceit of the picture is Grant is a man with two heads. It started as a boil at the base of his neck in which eyes and a mouth gradually form. This second head will be the manifestation of the worst of the man’s inclinations.
It also has the voice of writer and director Bruce Robinson, and I wondered why none of the other characters wondered why it sounds different than Grant, as everybody believes the advertising executive is making the bizarre pronouncements which come from the talking pimple. Some of these interjections are simply rude. Others are advertising copy that makes for exceptionally strange non-sequiturs. Consider these statements made to wife Rachel Ward as she sets out dinner: “Are you ashamed of your false teeth?”, “Breath. For many, the unmentionable”, and “Put an end to the misery of dentures. You could smile again with confidence, just ask Barbara Simmons.”
Ward is deeply irritated by random utterances such as these, claiming Grant is making them. Admittedly, the boil conveniently waits until she has her back to him or otherwise cannot see his mouth before the zit, um, spews such inanities. As for myself, I was wondering why she wasn’t doing what she had promises a doctor, and that was to transcribe what the boil says, or what Grant says the pustule is saying.
She also seems to think this mysterious Barbara Simmons is another woman in his life, when that was just a hypothetical person fabricated in his mind. Simmons was one of the figures conjured by Grant, a “biochemist by day and a woman by night”, one of a long line of such imagined people in an early scene which already suggests cracks in his psyche.
The schizophrenic nature of his work seems to permeate every aspect of the office in which he works. There is a great scene with boss Richard Wilson in which that man has two conversations at once and without any indication which person he is addressing: Grant or the secretary with whom he is talking on a headset. In the outside world, Grant finds himself infuriated by how readily people buy into the types of lies inherent to his work, such as the fellow train commuters who accept as fact a newspaper article saying a trash bag “might have contained” cannabis resin, telling the others the bag also “might have contained” pork pies, turnips or oven parts.
But the actual manifestation of that schizophrenia is the boil, and it is proves to be a very solid (well, slightly squishy) metaphor. It is the manifestation of the worst parts of Grant’s mind, all the things he tries to suppress but which are about to completely take over his persona. The actual transformation is surprisingly horrific, with Grant alone in a hospital room as the other personality takes over his right arm, using it to unwrap this now fully formed new head, and wrap in bandage his original one.
The boil and the second head are practical effects, which they had to be, given the age of the movie. They are effective but still somewhat lacking. There is something especially off-putting about the boil when it has eyes and a mouth and talks. This is done accomplished through some rather primitive puppeteering, but the design is even more revolting than I felt a talking zit should be. It is a crude idea rather crudely executed, which somehow makes it even more repulsive than if it had been more realistic.
It makes this UK production feel as if it wandered into the territory of Troma Films. While it is not as crude or low-budget as that studio’s output, far less money was put into this than many of the fellow productions from studio Handmade Films.
Just two years prior, the studio had more cash for the now-legendary Withnail & I, another Robinson film, and the one which introduced Grant to the world. The actor was memorably maniacal in that picture, yet is somehow even more crazed in this one. I fully believed his character was in severe distress, and I was worried the actor expending so much energy might cause him to really have the breakdown we’re seeing on the screen.
Also similar to that earlier film, the rest of the cast is solid, particularly Ward, whose character follows an arc that is basically an inversion of Grant’s. Not that the glamorous actress gets any talking zits of her own. Something I find odd is how much she resembles Anya Taylor-Joy in close-ups, and both actors have many of the same expressions in their toolkit.
What is a bit frustrating about the picture is something undefinable makes it a less than satisfying experience. I am completely onboard with film’s messages, yet I still felt like it was a tad too didactic at times. Also, I question some of the more bizarre tangents, especially a throwaway bit with two Disneyesque animated birds which adds nothing to the experience in their brief appearance.
But the greatest hurdle How to Get Ahead in Advertising has to overcome is its key gimmick, as nobody really wants to see a sentient zit (“sentizit”?). It is almost like the mind behind it failed to espouse some of the aspects of advertising which Grant dispenses throughout the runtime. In the end, I keep thinking back to an image on the wall behind his office desk, one which shows a line of toothpaste neatly laid out on the back of a toothbrush. The movie is bit like that, it looks good and it gets a lot of things right, but something is so fundamentally flawed as to make one question its existence.
Dir: Bruce Robinson
Starring Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward
Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray