A Clockwork Orange

There is something about this stylish look at modern English society – one that is filled with reckless love, drugs and violence – that is scarier than all the chaos, awkwardness, muggings and rapes it shows on the screen. Dennis Schwartz said in his review, “I think that something has to do with the fear we have of trusting the young people depicted in the film with the future of the country.” Stanley Kubrick, seriously, looks like he is targeting the ideals of the community and at the politicians who are oblivious about what to do about the violence we have seen every day in a society that appears to be a radically one, where crimes are mainly done by teens. Schwartz mentioned, “He questions society's responses to deterring crime: by their social reforms, their organized religions, their scientific experiments, their political meddling (from the Right and the Left), and by making prisons as the solution to all society's problems.”

That “A Clockwork Orange” has stood the test of time and is as important seeing in 2018 as it was when it first came out in 1971, is showing that society has not changed much since that time and that the film has opened up some thoughts in our minds about how we as a society still can’t deal with the seriousness of the problems marked.

The film is done with so much stylish colors, especially the orange background as the film’s title tells. It is so appealing to look at that it appears shameful that we are shown so much violence, as it looks like even the violence shown and choreographed is very entertaining for the serious message it is trying to tell. Schwartz noted, “One might expect a musical film to be taking place, if one were not aware that Kubrick was the director.”

The droogs (Malcolm McDowell, Warren Clarke, James Marcus and Michael Tarn) as they call themselves, are sitting in their favorite Korova milk bar place, drinking their drug-spiked mild and bordered by white-fiber glass nude furniture and statues of obedient women kneeling. Schwartz noted, “They are wearing white trousers and white suspenders to match, with black combat boots and derbies, and have billy-clubs at their sides.” Every night they perform stylized but mindless various crimes. Their thinking is that they can whatever they want forcefully. Love is the simple in-and-out act, if they want a car they just steal it, and if they don’t like someone, they just beat them. Schwartz mentioned, “These school-age kids do not necessarily come from bad homes--So, why are they so alienated from society, is the sixty-four dollar question!”

In the first act of the film, we see a poor drunk man (Paul Farrell) get beaten up for being a beggar, a stylized gang fight, a terrible rape (Adrienne Corri) and paralyzing her writer husband (Patrick Magee), killing a wealthy superior woman called the Catlady who runs a health farm (Miriam Karlin) with giant artifact of a man’s private, and finally, the fighting for control of the gang among the team.

The leader of the droogs, Alex de Large (McDowell), lives at the graffiti house Municipal Flatblock 18a Linear North with his stylish older mom (Sheila Raynor), who has purple-dyed hair, and with his working-class father (Philip Stone). Both parents do not know how to get Alex properly ready for school. The school adviser, played by Aubrey Morris, is obviously gay, who can’t relate very well to the disturbed Alex. Music, specifically Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, gets Alex ready for love and violence. It is his theme in life, the very joy of his living, the inspiration for his insane dreams. The other type of music that plays a large part in Alex’s life is from “Singin’ in the Rain,” which he happily sings during the rape and is played as the credits roll at the end of the film when Alex is apparently cured. That is, he is able to have his violent loving dreams again.

Schwartz said, “In this rather cynical and probing look at societal attitudes and what can only be termed as a dehumanized society that Kubrick sees all around him, the harshest comments are reserved for the scientific experiments conducted on Alex so that he will be conditioned out of his criminal impulses.” These experiments were tested where he is given a fourteen-year prison sentence for murdering the Catlady. He was put in prison when his fellow droogs, Georgie (Marcus) and Dim (Clarke), upset with him antagonizing them go against him during an incident and knock him over the head with a milk bottle, letting the police arrest him.

Schwartz said, “The "experimental therapy" treatment Alex agrees to that gives the convicted killer a chance for an early release is backed by the new right-wing government in power, as the Machiavellian Minister of the Interior (Anthony Sharp) worms his way into the headlines hypocritically claiming that his administration will put a stop to the criminal by controlling his thoughts.” When an inappropriate thought is made, the patient will have a serious sick reaction which stops him from performing the act.

Alex comes back to the world as an apparent “changed” man with a physical hatred to the following: love, Beethoven’s Ninth and violence. There is a strong enough reaction to these things that cause him to vomit. However, he quickly finds out that he cannot go back home, that he must pay for his sinful acts, and in his mission to make up for his past. The same poor man he once attacked now gets other poor men to fight back; the police who help him from this attack are his former droogs Dim and Georgie. They now take him out into the woods and tell him about the surprise at their current job, by telling him they are now old enough to have these jobs. Schwartz said, “By mistake, he enters the house of the writer he once attacked, and will be used by that writer's left-wing group for political revenge against the government they can't stand.” They get Alex to try and kill himself with the loud sound of Beethoven’s Ninth. Schwartz said, “Alex survives his fall with broken bones and the renewed friendship with the minister, who descries that former treatment blaming the doctors who experimented on him for their foolish plan.” On top of that, he arrests the writer as a political insubordinate, and retreats Alex to be the same before. He does all of this so that his team can keep being in office.

Kubrick’s look at society is an overly pessimistic one. There is something evil out there, but what to do about it, that is the question left unanswered. For Kubrick, at least we better think about what we doing to ourselves, before we can’t do that. The scariest part of the film was that all the severity of violence and cultural disgrace, are pretty close to what the standards of society actually are.

Schwartz noted, “I was left feeling unsure of how to take the film's message.” Was there a moral uncertainty done toward the violence? Or, is Kubrick just being a moralist, blaming everybody? There doesn’t look like there is a lot to think about as other ways to handle the problem with the teens. Schwartz ended his review by saying, “The film adaption from Anthony Burgess' dystopian novel results in a pure Kubrick, over-indulgent, brilliantly visual and graphic film (the sets alone could tell the story). The jargon language used (called Nadsat-an onomatopoetic combination of English, Russian, and slang) made for a most arresting film, one that can't be put aside without thinking about what kind of impact it makes on how we view such moral and ethical problems. But I just don't think we come away knowing anything more about what to do about these problems than before seeing the film. Nevertheless, it was a visual joyride, something that is terrifyingly pertinent in an eerie sort of way; a memorable film, one that has become ingrained in our culture and must be looked upon as one of those 'important' films that one should see. I just didn't think it reached the level of some of Kubrick's other masterpieces (2001, Paths of Glory, The Killing, Eyes Wide Shut, and Dr.Strangelove) that, for me, were on more solid intellectual footing.”

Be careful when watching this movie because it is insane. Everything that is shown in the movie is just pure madness that you’ll be shocked when watching this. After watching this, I don’t think you’ll need to watch it again. This is probably one of those films that you only need to watch once and never need to see it again. However, if you watch it again, you have a stronger stomach then I do. This is not a film that you should skip over. Check it out and see for yourself.

Now with that said, look out tomorrow where I look at another classic in “Halloween Month.”