For film nerds, "A Clockwork Orange" is a sort of rite of passage. It's the Forbidden Fruit of cinema, shrouded in infamy and danger yet somehow alluring, like a stone idol towering over you, daring you to approach even though you know it could do something horrible to you. Directed by permanent film school god Stanley Kubrick and based on the Anthony Burgess novel of the same name, the film was just as controversial upon release as the book. The American version was originally rated X, the dreaded rating above R. The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures rated it C for "Condemned" and later "Morally Offensive" when the "Condemned" label was abolished in 1982. Nonetheless, the film was an overall success, grossing $26.5 million in the U.S. and was nominated for Best Picture at that year's Oscars. Today, it's considered one of Kubrick's best films and one of the best films of all time period. However, does the film lose something once taken out of its original environment?
Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is a sadistic gang leader who spends his days skipping school, while his nights are spent beating, raping and robbing anybody he finds. When he's finally arrested, he's picked for a government experiment that officials believe can "cure" crime forever. While the treatment is a success, it comes with unintended and damaging consequences.
The trickiest business for this narrative is somehow making Alex identifiable. We need to be able to relate to him in order for us to see the government experiment as inhumane and evil. How in the world do you have the audience relate to a debaucherous rapist and murderer? Well, for one, they show Alex in more than just the light of a relentless monster. The sequence where he fakes a headache and skips school shows him as more of a trouble-making kid playing hooky. There's also the fact that the world around Alex is constantly shown as hypocritical and inefficient. Pornographic art covers the walls not only of private homes, but of public restaurants and bars. Prison guards are quick to anger and mistreat their prisoners. They're all just as flawed as Alex, but express it in different ways so they can pretend that they aren't. There's something about self-righteousness that makes it more infuriating than outright embrace of evil.
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However, the connection from Alex to the audience exists on a deeper narrative level. Throughout the film, there is visual storytelling that announces a critique of violence and sex being used for entertainment. All of Alex's evil deeds are filmed in a way that makes the camera seem like an audience member; POV shots, scenes taking place on stage, etc. The demonstration of Alex having been "cured" of his devilish ways is on an elevated stage before an audience of government officials. It involves Alex being bullied by an older man and being presented with a naked woman who he can't bring himself to touch. The crowd marvels and cheers at Alex's obvious agony and for the naked woman as she exits stage left.
In this way, the audience is drawn further to being like Alex without even realizing it. We are Alex; he is our hedonism fully realized and we're being raked over the coals for being just like him. In a way, we're in the same position as the government officials who hang pictures of naked women on their walls and watch Alex suffer on stage; we enjoy the same things he does, but we enjoy them in a different way so that we can say we're better people.
You'd think that the movie smacking its audience for being perverted sadists would be hypocritical because of the amount of nudity and beatings in the film. However, the film sidelines this by refusing to portray any of it in an entertaining way. The beatings by/for Alex are horrifying to watch and listen to. It's not an action scene to get your blood pumping or a harrowing scene to make you feel the intensity. It's done to make you feel as uncomfortable and helpless as the victim.
These feelings are mostly conveyed through the stellar camerawork. There are rarely any closeups in times of mayhem or suffering. Instead, we're given a wide shot a few feet away from the subject. By doing this, the filmmakers doggedly refuse to give the audience any sort of rush, instead forcing them to watch the scene. This is all done with the purpose of making the audience feel bad for normally enjoying the suffering the people on screen are going through.
Even the choice of music score ties into the connection between Alex and the audience. During his "rehabilitation" Alex is shown scenes of violence and sex in order to make him physically ill whenever he thinks of them. However, they end up playing Beethoven in one of the clips, which forces Alex to associate debilitating illness with his favorite composer. Something similar has been happening throughout the film; every scene of horror and pain is accompanied by some classical tune. Even "Singing in the Rain" (improvised by McDowell on set) is accompanied with the rape and crippling of a man and his wife. In the same way Alex was forced to become sick when he listens to his favorite composer, the audience will be forced to think of "A Clockwork Orange" whenever they hear these tunes.
In this sense, the film may be more important now than it was first released. In modern entertainment, we're always trying to raise the bar of risqué content. We use images that would normally horrifying in real life for the sake of entertainment; war, murder, even torture. I'm not saying we should remove these things from the visual arts entirely, but maybe we could stand to be told to tone it down now and again.
Like Kubrick's other masterpieces, "A Clockwork Orange" can be mined for so much more than technical skill. The narrative is thick with themes to unpack, interpretations to decipher and characters to study. It's proof that just because something looks like an exploitative, nihilistic waste of time, that doesn't mean it is one. In fact, it could be preaching against exploitative, nihilistic wastes of time. You just have to dig deeper, even if your soul comes out a bit blacker on the other side.
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