Cinema: Lost Allegory

Lord of the Flies, in book form, was the eerie little novel by William Golding that replaced Salinger's long-loved Catcher in the Rye in undergraduate affections and book bags. It was an ominous replacement. On the surface, the story tells of a band of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a desert island during a nuclear war, and describes how they regress from summer-camp camaraderie into savagery, sadism and murder. Between Golding's lines lies a frightening parable of evil, a strong case for the revival of the unfashionable concept of original sin, and...