A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971): USA

Reviewed by Christopher Connor. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Violence. Sex. Control. Choice. These are all major themes in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange based on the amazing book by Anthony Burgess set in a futuristic Britain. The film opens with a close up of our protagonist, that is Alex, and slowly zooms out to show his three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim. They are dressed in interesting white outfits, wearing bowlers and berets, surrounded by nude statues of women in various poses all with different vibrant hair colors while drinking a drug laced milk that will get them ready for a bit of the ol’ ultra-violence.

This is not your typical group of young men. Fun for them is going out on the town fighting other gangs of droogs, beating up old men, raping women, and stealing from all of them. But don’t get the wrong impression. Alex isn’t your ordinary thug, either. With his extensive vocabulary, including words we’ve never heard before, good manners, biting wit, and love for Ludwig van Beethoven, we’re shown a sophisticated youth with a selfish urge towards violence. But his violent lifestyle soon gets the better of him when he upsets the rest of his gang and they turn on him after a robbery gone wrong.

After the accidental killing of a woman, Alex is sentenced to fourteen years in prison where the process of control begins, starting with changing his name to a number. While there, though, he only learns to hide his criminal urges and spends his time sucking up to superiors, but always secretly dreaming of all the horrible things he’d like to do. Upon hearing about a new experimental technique being used on inmates promising to give freedom after only about a week, he manages to be accepted as a test subject. He shortly learns that this may not have been all that he was hoping for when he is physically forced to watch violent images, with the unfortunate soundtrack of his favorite composer, after being injected with a serum to make him feel nauseous, causing him to associate the feelings with the pictures on the screen. He is forced to detest violence.  The problem is, how will society treat Alex once he is “cured” and let back onto the streets of Britain?

Kubrick brilliantly creates a future world, not with extreme gadgets and mind blowing technology, but with strange and interesting outfits, synthesized sounds resembling classical music, strange vocabulary, and an array of different, bright colors that are prominent throughout the movie. We already know from seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey that he could invent a futuristic world based around fantastic technologies, so this choice to not feature them is not because of laziness or lack of imagination, but seems to be a deliberate choice that works extremely well. His juxtaposition of classical music with violent images creates a disturbing atmosphere, often times making you question how you should feel.

Are we to like Alex and feel for him as he’s being brainwashed? Maybe we’re supposed to be repulsed by him and his destructive actions? A Clockwork Orange asks us many questions, but never gives any solid answers. What makes us human or machine? Is it moral to brainwash for the good of society? When taken away the ability to really choose, whether it be for good or bad, are we still human or are we just another cog?

 

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Published:
01.30.12 / 3am
Category:
Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2012