What movie, Mario?
aah sorry, i thought topics are bound to movies. was talking about ‘A Clockwork Orange’.
My favorite thing about it is the way Kubrick manipulates everything (except the story) to make you on Alex’s side. When Alex is beating people up, the music is jolly and almost comical, but when he’s getting beaten, the music is disturbing. Every time Alex does something horrible, Kubrick does everything in his power to make it as light as possible, but whenever anything bad happens to Alex, Kubrick makes it seem as horrible as possible (I though that the scene when Alex is forced to lick the actor’s shoe in front of an audience was one of the most disturbing because of the background noise, lighting, and camera angles, even though there are far worse things in other parts).
On top of the story elements Nate mentions I absolutely love the dialogue as well as the performance by Malcolm McDowell. However, Michael Bates as “Chief Guard” is priceless… “Pick that up and put it down properly!”
No, no no. The best part is Stanley’s symbolism and all the little metaphors he hides right inf front of us!
Yeah Mario this movie is pretty bad so all the fuss is people getting caught up in it, it’s not that good.
I think its good for a movie about a bunch of dudes, drinking absynth, and doing as much damage as possible. Only to be met with reaping what they sew in the end. The film is a circular moral tale that ends with a happy thought. Having said that its descent at best.
Uh, how does it end with a happy thought? The implication is that the conditioning has been broken and that Alex of course will go back to a life of ultraviolence.
I’m intrigued by Nate’s observation about the use of cheerful and ominous music. Who can forget the close-up of Patrick Magee (sp?) shaking in horror and rage as he hears Alex singing “Singin in the Rain” in the bathtub? Kubrick’s good at those shock cuts. For me, all of The Shining comes down to that amazing edit at the end where we see Nicholson in long view collapsing in the snow and then, boom, that medium closeup of him frozen to death. And the use of wide-angle cinematography is very good in Clockwork Orange. Kubrick, I think, was ultimately a better maker of images than of films. When I think of any one of his films I always think of one or two standout, indelible images; rarely, though, how the film made me feel overall. Tom Cruise giving that slight nod in the white half-mask at the orgy is an example from Eyes Wide Shut. I guess I’ve never been a big fan of A Clockwork Orange — I like my sex and violence to be a bit more, oh, “intellectualized” I guess. Whatever that means.
All the same I don’t really bash Kubrick or Kubrick-lovers because I do think he broke ground by welding the art film with the Hollywood entertainment film. You could do a lot worse. And the last twenty minutes of 2001 have always given me chills.
If the point of the story (future dystopia,social satire/warning), and Kubrick’s brilliant artistry in delivering said point, elude you because the ultra-violence gets in the way, then I would urge you to read Anthony Burgess’ book instead. (Re. the violent content: absolutely sickening, yes, and I’m glad to hear you decry it: means there are still people in today’s world who react negatively to screen violence — whereas I’ve long been thinking that the younger folk have become totally inured to violence and violent representations — Yipes! Shades of Clockwork Orange!!),
Kubrick did an interesting, and masterful job with Burgess’ material. Thecinematic result is intense, rivetting, terribly beautiful, and truly dread-inspiring – in what it says about us as humans. In my view, Clockwork O is right up there with Lolita, Dr Strangelove, and 2001: A Space Odyssey — this auteur’s greatest works (but haven’t seen Full Metal Jacket as yet). And the special challenges presented in interpreting particularly Space Odyssey and Clockwork O on film give weight to the argument that these two must be considered his “best”. [Strangelove will ALWAYS be my favourite, though!]
Note to S L Carter – did you mean “reaping what they sow”? Did you mean to write “decent”? To refer to “its descent” (the going-down movement of a thing) means quite a different thing from saying “it’s decent” (as in “it is well and good”), and you will certainly confuse us mightily. Careful now! Words do matter. And no, it hasn’t got a happy ending…
The other thing about Kubrick films is they’re a lot of fun to watch with other people. They’re sort of like roller coaster rides; they’re not really for people who want to get trapped inside their own heads. They stimulate reactions. Like if you were walking down the street with someone and you saw something unusual and one of you turned to the other and asked, “Did you just see that?” just for verification. “What did it mean?”
I think he wanted to use cinema to bring people closer together, ultimately.
>> And no, it hasn’t got a happy ending…<<
Well, it does for Alex.
I think this is why Kubrick remains a favorite of mine. There’s always something a teeny bit ambiguous about his films.
To me, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ belongs in a genera of films that combines revenge fantasy with the two act story. In the first act we see a sadist inflicting violence on innocent people. And in the second act we see the perpetrator on the receiving end of the violence. The most infamous film in this genera is ‘I Spit on Your Grave’, mainly because it is very poorly directed and its feminist pretensions. Quentin Tarantino’s most recent movie ‘Death Proof’ straddles the line between ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘I Spit on Your Grave’.
What makes ‘Orange’ unique is that it establishes Alex as a despicable yet quirky character in the first act. Kubrick films all of Alex’s sadistic activities from the perspective of his victims. And in the in the second act, he films Alex receiving the revenge of his victims from his perspective. It challenges the viewer to contemplate their own sadistic tendencies through their identification with Alex. The story uses genera as a test of empathy. It also allows the viewer to contemplate how every individual experiences pain and how ones actions have repercussions. In the first act of the film Alex simply sees people as objects, to him they exist only when he sees them, he can act upon them, dominate them, and as soon as they leave his field of vision they no longer exist. It is only after he turns on his own Broogs that the concept hits him in the head (literally).
The final scene of the film, the conversation between Alex and the politician is the only scene where the audience does not share the perspective with anyone in the scene. Alex has returned to his sadistic, un-empathetic self. The politician hopes to exploit Alex’s bad experiences in the second act as a means to gain political clout. He cheerfully disregarding Alex’s victims from act one, implying that they were enemies of the state. Kubrick turns the camera onto the crowd of reporters entering the hospital room, in turn flashing their cameras. In this moment Kubrick reveals the manipulative power of media to force empathy on the viewer, and especially the manipulative power of the motion picture medium. In the final shot we see a fantasy of Alex (what film professor Bruce F. Kawin would call a “mindscreen” in the first act, but this time we are removed from Alex. It is humorous when Alex states “I am free” because it displays, as was stated directly in ‘Full Metal Jacket’, a dichotomy of the nature of man.
The movie, at face value, may not look like more than a group of violent teenagers beating and raping people with no after-thought at all. However, the novel (written by Anthony Burgess) brings about a final chapter that was not shown in the film. This 21st chapter was edited out of the american version of the book, and gives a completely different ending than the movie does. In this chapter, Alex finds himself with a new group of droogs. He then begins to see regret and distaste in his annual flings, and vows to start anew. The ending of the movie does not sum up enough, making the movie seem almost pointless by leaving Alex as he had started out.
In the beginning, Alex and his droogs are antagonists in a bleak near-future created by the visionary mind of Burgess. They go about and kill the homeless, and rape the rich, with no regards. This is depicted very disturbingly in the film, but gives the viewer a sense of Alex’s life, as well as the life of the victims. In the second part, Alex is arrested. After two years in prison, he is put under experimental and controversial treatment. He is injected with some odd medicine and strapped down, forced to watch videos of ultra-violence, rape, and war. The medicine makes Alex sick, and his mind connects the sickness to what he is watching on the screen. In this way, every time he witnesses or thinks about committing an act of violence, he feels sick. It is also apparent that during a war film the background music plays a classical score by Beethoven (in the book it is not Beethoven, but I believe it is in the movie), which Alex is quite fond of. But like everything else, he gets sick when listening to classical music. This symbolizes punishment for Alex. After the treatment Alex is released into the world, where he meets up with droogs and victims of his. It is here that he finds himself victim to both his victims and his droogs. After attempting suicide, he finds solace in a hospital, where he is cured.
This is where the movie ends. A politician uses Alex as a victim to better himself, using media empathy to boost his popularity. Alex, back to normal, can seemingly go about his ways as he had done before he was arrested. This gives the viewer the idea that nothing has changed, and that the movie has no real point. This is where I find it is necessary to have a epilogue ending as the book did, where Alex begins to redeem his life and grow up. That is what Burgess’ intentions were, to have Alex ‘grow-up’ and begin a normal life. This is why he wrote it with 21 chapters (where 21 symbolizes coming to age). Burgess believed that when America took out the last chapter, it drastically altered and ruined the book.
So to explain your question, you were supposed to feel the nausea to show the wrongness of Alex’s ways, but in reading the book, you are supposed to feel good that he has changed his ways. In the movie, you are left to wonder what will happen next. Most viewers would probably jump to conclude that he will hurt and rape the community again as he had done before. I can see why you may not have enjoyed the movie, but if you read the book, and enjoy it for the story, you can look at the movie and enjoy it for Kubrick’s views and artistic direction.
I just want to chime in to a 5 month old thread that this film, no matter how much one likes its content, is impeccably directed and wonderfully adapted.
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I love the mood, the set design, the acting, the story, the music choices, everything. To me it’s the best movie that shows what goes around, comes around
When Gene Kelly singing “Singing in the Rain” comes up with the credits, the audience is reminded of an earlier time in the film when we heard the song (and I, at least, continue to do so). As the film is partially about conditioning, I found this “little something extra to take home” with me impressive. We were conditioned just as Alex was—by watching a movie, no less.
Other than the production values, I think it’s a silly movie that got away with murder.
When I hear about how great “A Clockwork Orange” is, I really get the feeling people are seeing something that isn’t there. I’m not a moralist, but I think it’s irresponsible for Kubrick to try to make us feel more sympathy for a serial rapist and murderer than for his victims. The violence has no tension to make us sympathize for anyone he hurts, but boy, when he is wronged, we’re supposed to feel mighty sorry for him. It dumbs down the central “moral debate” everyone hypes about: freedom to choose. Interestingly enough, Kubrick makes the choice for us as to which side to take. I admittedly have never been able to sit through rape scenes, but I think the film would have benifieted from not flinching from the violence, instead of cutting away. Think about it: if Kubrick had made Alex’s violence horrific instead of comic and stylized, wouldn’t that have juxtaposed one evil against another and thus made it a challenging, thought-provoking debate? The moral debate is invalidated in my mind.
I read the book in three days. It’s a masterpiece. It doesn’t flinch when Alex gets two ten-year-old girls drunk and rapes them. We are privy to his thoughts and the evil within him. But he’s charming. And evil. The moral debate is more valid in the book, although in the text, Alex quickly signs away his sanity with the flick of a pen without a thought, whereas in Kubrick’s film, he’s forced into not reading it, thus making him the only “victim” in the mess. Aside from this, the prose is masterful.
The trailer is, however, one of the best of all time.
“Yeah Mario this movie is pretty bad so all the fuss is people getting caught up in it, it’s not that good.”
Err, yeah. It’s one of Kubrick’s best work. Yeah, people are getting caught up in Burgess’ genius, how misdirected we are, way to delude yourself. Pfft.
EDIT: No film could be made similarly today. It’s simply an impossible feat. To say that A Clockwork Orange is a “minor work” is like declaring James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner a “minor work” … it’s a revolutionary commercial inebriation that the public would never be considerate of without Kubrick’s donation.
And even ignoring Kubrick on this subject, A Clockwork Orange is such an incredible piece of art. Ah, allow me to regain my excessive obsession … I’ll elaborate on this subject in the near future …
I think the violence is more horrific because it’s juxtaposed against Alex’s cartoon manner. I’m not laughing at these scenes, I’m cringing.
That being said, this is not my favorite Kubrick.
I’ve seen the film twice and read the book. I don’t think either is a classic. Burgess and Kubrick were able to make a simple story look large by adding a few clever elements like dystopian future, youth rebellion, ultra violence, ect.
It is a fair meditation about free will. Alex is a thug that we assume is a product of his environment. He undergoes a procedure to “correct him”. When he is put back into society he is socialized again into the person he was before the Ludovico treatment. The book has an extra chapter that gives the audience hope that Alex will start to rehabilitate himself. Kubrick decided not to put that into the film.
The more I think about the story, I more I believe that it really is too small an idea to justify the attention it has received. I love Kubrick but I’d say it is minor work. The film benefits from a strong cult following. But ultimately the story doesn’t possess the philosophical questions to justify the film’s elite status.
If you look at it from a sociological perspective it’s really quite interesting. Looking at how the society reacts to Alex and define his deviant behavior. Everything that changes is societies view of him. Alex himself does not change at all. He’s looked on as first a reckless youth, then violent criminal, and finally helpless victim. The scenes after alex leaves prison is a great example of the stigma ex cons have. Even though Alex is “cured” he’s still rembered for what he did beforehand and punished by society accordingly, even though he was already punished by the state. Only when the media gets a hold of alex at the end does society truly have sympathy for alex.
In short I argue that the most interesting things about the film is everything that happens AROUND Alex, and not Alex himself. Alex is as static as a character gets.
“The violence has no tension to make us sympathize for anyone he hurts, but boy, when he is wronged, we’re supposed to feel mighty sorry for him. It dumbs down the central “moral debate” everyone hypes about: freedom to choose. Interestingly enough, Kubrick makes the choice for us as to which side to take.”
This is the problem that a lot of people have with it. That it makes Alex look preferable to those that are actually conducting the moral punishment. preferable to the rules of society. Whether it’s true or not is open to debate, but i think it’s important to put both the film and the book in context. In the 60’s, there was a renewed interest in questioning our social institutions and their ability to effectively deal with the problem of difference and social disobedience. This was especially the case in academia. e.g Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punishment’, ‘Madness and Civilization’, Szasz’s ‘The Myth Of Mental Illness’ etc etc. Clockwork Orange needs to be understood in light of these debates, and Kubrick’s film especially, since unlike Burgess, he does leave the ending open to these sort of questions/interpretations. i guess you could argue it’s over the top or cheap, but that is satire for you. You either accept or not.
^Alex simply is prefferable to the others in his society… Kubrick does not side with Alex, but he does show the middle class drinking drugged milk at the kerova milk bar and the cat lady who calls her pornography art… When Alex was being ultra-violent he was conforming to the society around him, but when he is transformed into a new person via the ludoviko technique he is actually rebelling against them… he becomes the only good person in a world of horrible people… This is why he cannot survive under the treatment… One of the best examples of this is when he gives the hobo money… The treatment didn’t force him to do that, it was a genuine act of kindness, but the hobo kicks the shite out of him… Ultimately, with the ending, he is able to survive in his world again but only because he is once again conforming to their hideous values.
The problem that most people have is that they believe the society he lives in to be filled with good people… And that doesn’t say much for the society the audience actually lives in.
Great film.
@ Deckard: What exactly makes A Clockwork Orange “one of Kubrick’s best work”? Why and how is it “an incredible work of art”?
Some people like to try to tell me how “visually innovative” it is. How hard is it to get close to something with a wide-angle lens to make things look “weird”? Pick up a camera with a 24mm and see. What did the wide-angle lenses do for the story? Read the book and tell me if the form (Kubrick used) matched the content of the book. I kind of like to think every choice by a filmmaker should reflect what he or she is trying to convey. I could see someone saying that the barrel distortion of the lenses (what were they, 9.8mm? [Source: The Shining interviews with Garret Brown on the Two-Disc edition]) emphasises the distorted moral values of Alex and his world. But I think Roger Ebert nailed it on the head: then why is Alex in the center of the frame, where he isn’t distorted but everyone else is?
Kubrick went through great efforts to make Alex likeable. All right: if the story is told from his point of view, to what end? What was Kubrick trying to accomplish? What was the purpose of showing violence and condemning it if you’re not really condemning it? Let’s see: he made the fight with Billy Boy’s droogs Chaplin-y comic (is real-world violence funny? Have you ever been a victim of it?), cut away before the gang-rape in Mr. Alexander’s home, changed the record-store girls rape to consentual sex, shot the canal-side attack in tension-killing slow-motion, cut away before he pummeled the Cat Lady to death and stylized it all to Holy Hell! But everything that was done to him was depicted in great, naturalistic detail! It’s a ploy Kubrick used for sympathy.
Here is an example of a better film: Fritz Lang’s M. It doesn’t show us any violence, (but doesn’t need to) presents both sides of the story: a city gripped in fear and blind rage, the mysterious psychopath who is a victim of his own demons, the innocent children who are the greater victims. Each element is given weight. Lang takes no sides. In the kangaroo court, Beckert’s confession might be real, or a further manipulative ploy. And the ending seals the drama with no easy answers: whatever the state does to punish Beckert, it won’t bring back the murdered children. M is also ten times more innovative than ACO in its use of cutting away during dialogue to montages of related tableaux (with dialogue still playing, showing a disconnect of sound and image). Name one movie that did that with sound before M.
In A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick wants us to side with Alex. Why? Why make a movie condemning violence by wanting us to side with someone who loves it? Why have a moral debate on the freedom to choose if the choice is made for us? There’s no challenge to the moral debate if it’s one-sided. Hello! M just solidifies my stance and shows just how trite ACO is.
Exhibit B: Michael Haneke. Just look at the restrained but unsparing depiction of violence and denial of normal plot catharsis. Funny Games and Cache alone make ACO simplistic by comparison.
A Clockwork Orange isn’t just a minor work – it’s a complete misfire! Not only that, but I don’t think the book should have been adapted at all! So much is reliant on language that it’s impossible to depict it visually.
@ MARIO
Mario, I don’t know how old you are…
Though A CLOCKWORK ORANGE depicts a “future” dystopia, truth is, it’s set…. for all intents and purposes (if not literally)…. exactly in the year it came out, 1971.
At that time, the “youth rebellion” of the 60’s was a white-hot topic still. Hippies were seen in every major city, taking drugs, listening to rock, making love outdoors in the mud, dancing interacially, etc. The Manson murders in 1969 showed a horrifying portrait of the “flower children” gone terribly awry. They were grinning young deranged thugs who could walk into some of the richest homes in America…. and butcher the “nice” people within, “pillars of society” long thought to be “off limits” geographically to riff-raff. Vincent Bugliosi, author of HELTER SKELTER, pointed out that the hippie communes of Haight-Ashbury and Venice Beach and whatnot, even though they were purported to be about “love and peace”, usually had a brittle, violent, angry, electric undercurrent to them that threatened to erupt any minute.
Viet Nam, unlike any war before it, shipped gory color video of mayhem and death to every American living-room TV set. Americans had always been gung-ho about wars in the past… but many people— man woman and child—- had never seen the bloody reality of it so up-close ‘n’ personal before. A popular song was “We’re on the eve of destruction!”.
No big deal today, maybe? But in 1971, the “old guard” of both the USA and UK were startled, annoyed and frightened of these kids (now the “Baby Boomers”).
Though CLOCKWORK is not about “hippies”, per se, its release played right into the jaws of this mass fear that raggedy, crazy children were destroying civilization with sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, irreligiosity. Children who were openly rejecting the “wholesome” and “traditional” and patriotic values of the Depression/WWII generation.
CLOCKWORK was a perfect lightning-rod for the “generation gap” mood of 1971.
The movie also has a “Pop Art” feel to it, in keeping with the American & British Pop Art painters and sculptors of the 1960’s. So it “looked” very artsy-hip indeed, in its day.
CLOCKWORK was just…… very timely…. and it was something no-one had seen before, something taboo…. almost a kind of “porn” for its day, if you can believe it.
My parents— nice Texas folks—- dared each other to see it in 1971 when they were 28 years old. But they did not have ties with the hippie/yippie/panther radicalism of the 60’s; au contraire, they were highly conservative, although young, in their Texas fashion. I remember them coming home from this movie deeply disturbed and even nauseated… (I was about 8 at the time.) It was the Texas conservatives’ nightmare come true and writ large. (-:
-why is Alex in the center of the frame, where he isn’t distorted but everyone else is?-
Because it’s from his point of view.
-Kubrick went through great efforts to make Alex likeable-
I think “likeable” is inaccurate. Charismatic, maybe.Kubrick:
“Alex makes no attempt to deceive himself or the audience as to his total corruption and wickedness. He is the very personification of evil. On the other hand, he has winning qualities: his total candor, his wit, his intelligence and his energy; these are attractive qualities and ones, I might add, which he shares with Richard III” (quoted in _Stanley Kubrick Interviews).
-All right: if the story is told from his point of view, to what end? What was Kubrick trying to accomplish?-
-What was the purpose of showing violence and condemning it if you’re not really condemning it?-
I don’t see it as either condemning or endorsing violence. But, in the world of the film, aside from music (and perhaps sex), violence is the only means that Alex has of expressing himself. And, again, we locked in to Alex’s POV, and condemnation would require stepping outside of that POV.
- Why have a moral debate on the freedom to choose if the choice is made for us? There’s no challenge to the moral debate if it’s one-sided.-
Is it really a “moral debate?” I’d say if anything it’s sort of a Hegalian dialectic—the “cure” for the physically violent and otherwise socially-undesirable instincts inherent in the natural free will is the physical and psychological violence imposed by civilization and the state— the demand for conformity and instinctual repression. How do we as a civilization arrive at a synthesis?
Mario
someone please explain to me what’s so special about this movie, other than evoking nausea?