Petulia

“I want to offer the scattershot of experience to an audience and make them work. I want to make each person sitting in a row see a different film.” 
—Richard Lester

“Richard Lester's Petulia made me desperately unhappy, and yet I am unable to find a single thing wrong with it. I suppose that is high praise. It is the coldest, cruelest film I can remember, and one of the most intellectual. By that I don't mean it's filled with philosophy, like Bergman, or with metaphysics, like 2001. On the contrary, it's filled with nothing at all. It is lifeless, heartless, bloodless, the expression of Lester's abstract thought about the American way of life. And it is terribly effective.”
—Roger Ebert

“Warren says you can get out of anything if you want to bad enough,” Archie’s son tells him, but nobody can escape anything in this film, because nobody wants anything badly enough.
—Rosy Hunt

something alive in all this steel and glass

Carlos Valladares described Petulia as, quote, “one of the few narrative features that dares to attempt to capture how our thoughts move.” His review is breathtaking, as is the one by Rosy Hunt referenced above. 

Petulia is a revelation. I will watch it again as soon as I’m able. Tomorrow. Later this evening. It stunned me. Now I have an answer when someone asks for an underrated recommendation—attached with the leery caveat that you may not like it at all.