It was long overdue to rewatch Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 classic dystopian film about a crime ridden future London, and I feel like my understanding and appreciation for it has grown immensely. Starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex, a Beethoven obsessed psycho punk and his insufferable pack of “Droogs.” They spend their evenings in the Korova milkbar getting sharpened up on substances before embarking on adventures in the “old ultraviolence,” beating, robbing, and raping innocent victims along the way without remorse. Something I found interesting is that Alex isn’t your typical portrayal of a psychotic criminal in film. He’s an attractive young man who speaks calmly and intelligently, he comes from a stable home life with both parents, who he still lives with, and he has the means to live a flourishing and promising life. His psychosis sickness leads him to choose the ultraviolence he spends all his free time and energy on.
After a falling out with his “droogies” over compensation and questioning of Alex’s leadership, he is captured by the police and convicted for murder after bludgeoning a lady to death. He spends a couple years in prison miserable before being seen as the perfect candidate for a new, experimental behavior modification technique. The “technique” is meant to kill the sickness in him, causing him to become physically ill at the sight of violence, and reform him into a peaceful member of society before returning him to the streets. After an intense, torture-like regimen, the technique does its tricks and Alex is released back into society.
Now though, Alex is left helpless and unable to defend himself from the physical violence that he once craved, and in one way or another, becomes the victim of all his former victims. A Clockwork Orange was met with a lot of controversy upon its release for its intense and graphic scenes of physical violence. It was seen as promoting such behavior by critics and was banned from certain theaters and even countries initially. It is still seen by many as having some of the most disturbing scenes in thriller history, and at the surface can just be seen as a disturbing and intense revenge movie, but it’s much more than that. The idea of the film from Kubrick himself is to contemplate the importance of free will to humankind. If we lose the freedom to choose between good and evil for ourselves, then do we lose what it is that makes us human? Do we become a clockwork orange?
I think A Clockwork Orange is a must watch for any horror/psychological thriller fan, or really any film fan in general. Although disturbing and intense, it is also artistic, political, thought provoking, and very original. Stanley Kubrick is a master artist in filmmaking, and I personally think this movie ranks among some of his best work. With no authority figure showing us the difference between right and wrong, steering us towards creative and constructive behavior, would we sway towards thoughtless violence? And even deeper, should we lose that free will that allows us to choose and take part in thoughtless violence in the first place, or would we lose what it is to be human altogether if so?
