In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?
11 Dec A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Eye and the Genital
Kubrick’s films are misunderstood. Reading the professional reviews and comments here, one would think the reason for this film to exist is for Kubrick to make a strong satire. What bunk. What a small view.
This movie is about the tyranny of movies (and similar performances). The fact that so few people see it as something else is a testament to the self-protective nature of films in our soul.
The Droogs engage in performances. Their speech is theatrical. Their rival gang is discovered on the stage. There is a focus on the eye. They wear costumes. The sex with the teeniboppers is cast as a performance (and photographed that way). The accosted writer is (self-referentially) the writer of the film, who incidentally drives the character to suicide by exposing him to a performance. During that attack, the Droogs act out another film.
The therapy is forcing ‘us’ to watch movies precisely like the one we are watching. Kubrick follows the Film-within-the-film rule of having the distance of abstraction from the film with to the film be the same as from ’real’ life to the film. The entire film can be seen as (pick one): one of the punishment films; a subsequent vision in the hospital; a musical drama played out in some kid’s head; a simple hallucination in the milk bar; a simple invention of the gay writer (who pretends he had a wife).
All of Kubrick’s work starting with Lolita is an exploration into the plasticity of narrative, in the context of obsession (‘Lolita’), war (‘Metal’), power , space (meaning the environment as in’ Lyndon’), and invented reality (‘2001′) and adulterous fantasies (‘Eyes’). Here we work with violent adolescent sex: cockworks. It is what Phil Dick had in mind.
Posted in 2002
Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
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