If... Closing Scene Analysis

With reference to the closing of the film text If (1968) detail how it represents the representation of youth and conflict "Swinging Britian".

The final scene of If... (1968) shows group of nurses, priests and general workers and enforcers of authority running out of a church that has smoke pouring out of it. There's then an explosion from a bomb and people lying lifeless on the floor. It's originally difficult to tell if the entire scene is in the protagonists head or if it's real or not. As it's difficult to distinguish whether it's reality, it's clear that this is the protagonist's dream. We then see a fast zoom in to the protagonist shooting into a group of people, by figure expression we can see that he's extremely angry and by doing this, he's taking back control in his life. We also see that he's with a girl that he met after him and Wallace stole a motorbike. The girl represents freedom that he and Wallace experienced, the control that he had on his life for that brief period and how the girl also felt trapped and lack of control in her life working in a cafe.

After the group of boys are repeated shooting at the crowd, we see people from the church window handing out guns to everyone else. This could show how even though they are meant to be a god loving society, it could show a hypocrisy which is a reason as to why the protagonist is so angry in the first place. Then the headmaster attempts to reason with them and claims that he understands them and begs them to trust him, but the anger is too much for the protagonist and the girl, who represents in this case a wish for freedom shoots him. This is a visual metaphor for the protagonists wishes to have control of his life out-weighting any reason that the establishment have to offer.
We then see every member of the crowd trying to fight back, showing that even though the leader of the school is dead, the idea of conformism is support by every member in the crowd. The scene then cuts from scenes of the members of the establishment shooting back at the protagonist and the protagonist shooting back and defending himself. By using a close up shot of the protagonist, it makes him appear as more of a victim showing that he's always been a victim of the conformist's aggression, but when he fights back, he's extremely outnumbered.