's out of 5)"Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man."
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Cast
Malcolm McDowell - Alex DeLarge
Warren Clarke - Dim
James Marcus - Georgie
Michael Tarn - Pete
Patrick Magee - Frank Alexander
Michael Bates - Chief Guard Barne
Adrienne Corri - Mary Alexander
Carl Duering - Dr Brodsky
Paul Farrell - The homeless man
While I've seen director Stanley Kubrick's 1971 dystopian movie, "A Clockwork Orange" two or three times before, I haven't watched it recently. I normally watch the movies I want to comment on just before I write up my comments, even if I've seen the movie before.
However, I just finished Anthony Burgess's novel of the same title which the movie is based on. So, now I want to comment on the movie having just read the book.
I admit I've had a fascination with the "A Clockwork Orange" which, after first watching it out of complete curiosity several years ago, has stuck with me since.
I tried reading the novel a few years ago but didn't finish it. Now, I did.
While I want to watch the movie again for the sake of this entry, I find some of the imagery in the film pretty uncomfortable. I mean, I've seen it more than once. I know the story. And I just read the novel. Plus, I know what I want to say about, "A Clockwork Orange." So, here I go.
I was initially curious about the movie having heard of it many times but not knowing much about it outside of scenes, the strange title, and images from the movie I'd seen immersed throughout pop culture such as Malcom McDowell's sinister glare with his eyelash, bowler hat and strange outfit. The "heighth" of fashion, as Alex refers to it in the novel.
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| (L to R): James Marcus, Warren Clarke, and Malcom McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange." |
"A Clockwork Orange" takes place not-too-far in the future, but it isn't necessarily futuristic in the sci-fi understanding of the term.
In this future, the world is a much more violent place though the law and order of England still stands.
The story centers on a kid named Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) who leads a gang which he calls his "droogs" - Pete (Michael Tarn), Georgie (James Marcus) and Dim (Warren Clarke).
Like the novel, Alex, "your humble narrator" tells the story.
He begins immediately with his introduction, "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova Milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
After Alex and his droogs drug themselves up, they go around committing acts of horrific violence on innocent people for the mere thrill of committing violence.
They assault a homeless man whom they find sleeping under a bridge. Then they fight a rival gang of theirs.
Alex and his droogs also fool a writer named Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee) and his wife into letting them into their home by pretending to be in dire need of medical assistance. Once they're let in, they severely assault Alexander, and rape and murder his wife all while singing, "Singin' in the Rain."
After this night of "ultra violence," the droogs protest to Alex that they're tired of committing acts of petty crime, and want Alex to stop mistreating them, especially Dim whom Alex tends to push around the most.
Alex responds by beating them up in order to assert his authority.
Later, he and his droogs attempt to gain entrance into the home of a wealthy "cat-lady" to ultimately rob and beat her up. Alex knocks on her door pretending to need of medical help. The lady is well-aware of gangs attacking innocent people by tricking them to open their door, so she refuses and calls the police.
Not to be denied his thrill, he manages to break in and does what he set out to do. However, he takes it too far and ends up accidentally murdering. His droogs, meanwhile, are waiting for him outside.
When Alex tries to escape, Dim smashes his face with a bottle in retaliation for his constant mistreatment.
The droogs ditch him there for the cops to arrest. And arrest him, they do.
Alex is sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Alex agrees so he can get out of prison.
The experiment has Alex strapped to a chair with his eyes clamped open. He's forced to watch films depicting acts of violence and gratuitous sex. While watching, he's injected with certain drugs.
This process conditions Alex to become physically ill at the thought of committing a violent act.
Alex, by the way, is quite the aficionado of Ludwig van Beethoven, whose music he listens to as the perfect cap after a night of violent excursions.
"It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig van," he says in one scene. Well, it just so happens that the doctors putting him through the Ludovico are playing Beethoven during the films. So, now, he's inadvertently conditioned to feel sick when he hears Beethoven's music.
Once he's through with the Ludovico Technique, Alex is released from prison and returns back to the streets from whence he was picked up.
The prison chaplain complains that the technique has destroyed Alex's ability to choose right from wrong and thereby has destroyed Alex's free will.
The state, however, says Alex's inability to commit the heinous crimes he once did will be a benefit to society. It'll also cut crime and decrease prison populations. Machiavellian stuff!
Returning home to his parents, he finds they sold all of his belongings as compensation to his victims.
His parents have also taken in a border to, in a sense, replace Alex.
He later runs into one of his previous victims - the vagrant whom he beat up under the bridge. A group of vagrants retaliate by beating Alex up for what he did him years ago.
Two cops arrive and break up the ruckus. As it turns out, those two cops happen to be Georgie and Dim who have since turned themselves around.
Of course, they instantly recognize Alex, and he recognizes them. So, they take him to a secluded area nearby and beat him up pretty bad.
Now, in true need to medical attention, the exhausted Alex knocks on the door of the first house he comes across, begging to be let in. Little does he realize that the house belongs to none other than Frank Alexander who now is confined to a wheelchair thanks to Alex.
He doesn't recognize Alex at first and does have sincere sympathy for the kid. He does, however, know that Alex is the boy he read about in the papers as having undergone the Ludovico experiment.
Feeling even more sympathy for Alex, he wants to introduce him to his colleagues whom, like Frank, are opposed to such a method of rehabilitation.
He allows Alex to have a bath while his bodyguard (played by Darth Vader himself, David Prowse) prepares dinner for him.
However, while in the bath, Alex starts singing "Singin' in the Rain" at which point Frank realizes without a doubt it was he who assaulted them years ago.
In retaliation, he drugs Alex, locks him in the bedroom, and starts blasting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which makes Alex violently sick.
Unable to stand it, he jumps from his bedroom window in a suicide attempt. Alex ends up in the hospital after this attempted suicide.
After a variety of tests and such, Alex awakens to find he no longer has any aversion to violence.
While the movie ends there, the novel has one more chapter.
At the final chapter of the novel, which was omitted in the U.S. publication of Burgess's book, the results of the Ludovico technique are reversed, but Alex decides to give up crime and all that "ultra-violence." He doesn't find it as pleasurable as he used to. Instead, after running into Pete who reformed himself and now has a wife and family, Alex contemplates starting a family of his own and becoming a productive member of society. He thinks about the possibility of his own children taking up the violent life he once led which he finds is a terrible thought, indeed.
The film ends with Alex lying in a hospital bed, and having thoughts of violence once again along with a lewd fantasy about a young woman who happens to be standing in front of him. In his fantasy, he has his way with her while a crowd cheers them on. Over the scene, Alex is heard saying, "I was cured, alright!"
One of the differences between the film and the book occurs when Alex and his droogs attack the old vagrant within inches of his life. Later, after Alex is released from prison, a group of vagrants retaliate and beat up Alex as I mentioned in the synopsis.
In the book, however, he doesn't attack a vagrant. Rather, he attacks an old man returning from the library. After his release from jail, that same old man recognizes Alex who's in the same library researching painless suicide methods. The old man and a group of his colleagues retaliate by beating up Alex. That's when he's reunited with Dim and Alex's rival Billy Boy who are now cops, and who also beat him up in the woods.
While the story is certainly violent, there's a huge difference with how Burgess presents it compared to how Kubrick does.
Kubrick, whose movies are mostly (if not all) based on novels, often puts some sort of sexual tones in his films.
For instance, there's the ghost of the attractive woman in the bathtub Jack Torrance encounters in "The Shining." She turns into a decaying hideous old woman with a cackling laugh when he starts kissing her even though he's married.
There's the furniture shaped as lascivious women in "A Clockwork Orange," plus a few other lewd images.
There's the two homosexuals bathing in the river in "Barry Lyndon."
There's the entire premise of "Lolita."
There's the talk of protecting the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans as well as the sexual innuendos in "Dr. Strangelove" such as the refueling planes in mid-flight as the opening credits role to the romantic tune of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again."
There's senior drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's boisterous obscene jargon in "Full Metal Jacket."
There's also the secret society activities and orgies in "Eyes Wide Shut."
These sexual depictions in Kubrick movies are often done in a way that makes them disdainful and reprehensible. But they're still explicit. It's not the sex that's evil. It's the manner and the timing the characters are engaging in it that's evil. It often takes place solely in obedience to the lower passions and for completely debased reasons in some degree or another.
Meanwhile, Burgess's novel with all its "ultra-violence" and "dratsing" and "drencrom" and "devotchkas" and "lubbilubbing" provides a premise that seems to be the kind thematic stuff Kubrick must have been interested enough in to make a movie out of it.
In a video posted by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Burgess comments seeing Kubrick's film, mentioning specifically Kubrick's depictions of the sex and violence.
"I was appalled because what I merely suggested in the book was now explicitly in the film. I took great trouble in the book to hide the violence and sexuality by using a very strange language so the reader has to fight his way through the language to get to the juice, or to get to the physical reality. Here on the screen. we're getting the physical reality in a big way."
Like the other movies of Kubrick's, and thanks to Burgess's novel, "A Clockwork Orange" carries a lot of intellectual consideration and plenty of social commentary that Kubrick must think justifies all the violence and sexual depictions. I mean, honestly, there is a lot of social commentary which is what draws me in. And though the violence and sex are explicit, it's not glorified. Violence for violence's sake is violence, indeed. Alex is a sadistic murderer. You can't water it down. It's "real horrorshow" as Alex often says in the novel.
The novel masks it with Alex's futuristic English cockney slang when he talks about the things he has done.
There's so much I can say about Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." There's a lot that has been said about it. There's a lot of audiences seeing it for the first time 50 years after its production will say about it.
It's not a movie someone can leisurely watch. It's not a movie I would recommend for a Friday night flick. But it's most definitely not a terrible movie, content considered.
There are strong themes of free will, contrition, redemption and the state. It's a tale of mechanisms and robotic morality, or simply robotic obedience versus sin, grace, and healthy consciences.
"If you need a motor car, you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty Polly, you take it," Alex tells Dim in the movie. Such a claim continues to echo within our own current lawlessness, and insistence to be overly merciful towards the cruel which, as the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith said, is cruelty to the innocent.
In the introduction to the novel I read, Burgess says, "A human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good, or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange, meaning that he has the appearance of an organism, lovely with color and juice, but he is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the devil or, since this greatly increasing both, the almighty state. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate."
Burgess later states, "Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create."
He didn't care much for Kubrick's film. And his purpose in the book wasn't to explore unhinged, titillating evil but to stress the importance of moral choice.
For all his indulgence in violence and sexual perversity, Alex is left an empty shell. He's left a slave to his passions and desires, even after the psychological conditioning which considers man to be nothing more than a bag of flesh rather than a body with an immortal soul.
That final chapter of the book has goodness touch Alex's soul -finally. That's when he considers embracing a wholesome life. The movie, like the book without that final chapter, ends with Alex back to being a slave to his lusts while mocking his state-sanctioned psychological cure which didn't inspire in him a true desire to be good. It just left him incapable of actually committing terrible acts like a programmed machine...or a clockwork orange. "I was cured, alright" he says condescendingly at the end.
There's a Catholic theology at play here that contradicts the more Calvinist doctrine (as depicted in the state) that some souls are fated to sin and Hell, while others are fated for Heaven. Predestination.
That's no surprise as Burgess comes from a Catholic family, though I don't know how much of a practicing Catholic he was towards the end of his life. But he certainly seemed to know Catholic morality and theology. That's the impression I get, anyhow.
As a practicing Catholic, I was taught that men can work out their salvation. However, it's Calvinistic Protestantism to think as men are sinful, they can't avoid sin. So, why bother trying? They're predestined for Heaven or Hell, anyways.
So, men need to be forced to do good.
Burgess observed in a 1973 essay republished in the "New Yorker" back in 2012, “Catholicism rejects a doctrine that seems to send some men arbitrarily to Heaven, others—quite as arbitrarily—to Hell. Your future destination, says Catholic theology, is in your hands. There is nothing to prevent you from sinning, if you wish to sin; at the same time, there is nothing to prevent your approaching the channels of divine grace that will secure your salvation."
There's the premise that grabs my attention in "A Clockwork Orange."
The score, by the way, is hands down among my top favorite movie soundtracks as it utilizes a lot of classical composers such as Gioacchino Rossini, Beethoven (of course), Edward Elgar along with a score from Wendy Carlo who also composed the score to Kubrick's "The Shining."
I have to compare this soundtrack to other magnificent movie soundtracks such as "Amadeus" and Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid" as it gives the audience real insight into the mind of the main character. In this case, a sociopath.
For instance, Gioacchino Rossini's, "The Thieving Magpie" plays as Alex beats up his droogs while they casually walk along the Flatblock Marina. They previously tried to stand up to him for always beating up on poor Dim.
As Alex says in his narration during this scene, "I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So, now it was to be Georgie the General saying what we should do and what not to do. And Dim as his mindless grinning bulldog. Suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with a stereo on. And I viddied right at once what to do."
I can say this is a good movie for the story's theme. Kubrick does respect the source material and depict that theme well. Alex is a sadistic kid. A real "horror show" sinner. And if you're going to make a movie about such a character, it's going to show just how sinful this character is. The audience has to see just how evil he is if his turn-around is going to be significant.
However, Burgess can hide the sins behind a futuristic cockney slang while still making thos sins obvious. No doubt that wouldn't work on a movie platform, unfortunately. So, Kubrick's movie has some blatant depictions of sex and violence.
It's easier for audiences to work through the movie than the book. While the movie gave the story's premise some strong imagery that stuck with me, the book put sense to it all.
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