.a clockwork orange.
* * * * * out of * * * * *
Dystopia. Drug-laced milk. Menagé a trois. Fashionably coordinating hoodlums, classical music, and ultraviolence. Stanley Kubrick’s darkly marvelous A Clockwork Orange may not be everyone’s favorite, but it will always hold great appeal for us quirky, hip young things. We get an attractive, charismatic antihero in Alex DeLarge, unforgettably portrayed by young Malcolm McDowell, a smirking deviant who spouts highly quotable Russo-Cockney slang and who has a penchant for Beethoven. He and his droogs, dressed to the nines and hopped up on narcotics, have a malicious itch to scratch, a soulless thirst for depravity and destruction. They slake that thirst with ultraviolence, which includes gang rumbles, assault on the elderly, theft, rape, and murder. In essence, we delight in all the elements which shocked and outraged the generations before us, and if we didn’t watch it in defiance of their moral values, we’d watch it simply because, from script to sets to costumes to soundtrack, it’s so damn stylish.
Children of a desensitized and over-psychoanalyzed age, we empathize with Little Alex as he goes from thrill-seeking reprobate to convicted murderer to insincerely reformed prisoner who, in an effort to trick the system and gain early release, agrees to undergo experimental psychological treatment. The Ludovico Method “cures” Alex by conditioning him to be physically ill at the contemplation of violence or, as a cruel side-effect, upon hearing his beloved Ludwig Van. With his dearly-bought freedom he finds he is disenfranchised, displaced, and disillusioned. Deprived of all that once gave him joy, he is victimized and brutalized by the world he once had on a blood-soaked string. But never fear, O my brothers. In the manner of any good story about essential badness, all’s miraculously well that ends well for our Little Alex.
There’s moral issues in there somewhere, about the nature of goodness and freewill and blah blah blah. The book is much better for all that. The appeal of the film is the mirror we fancy it holds up to us: cultured, intelligent youth with a devil-may-care attitude and a lust for extreme overindulgence, punished by society for defying its laws yet ultimately glorified by it for doing so. A Clockwork Orange will always be adored by we vain young intellectuals. So here’s to violence, sex, drugs, and Beethoven rolling back over. Horrorshow.
(This review to appear, edited by Jim Ridley, in a forthcoming issue of the Nashville Scene! Keep your eyes peeled, true believers!)
Dystopia. Drug-laced milk. Menagé a trois. Fashionably coordinating hoodlums, classical music, and ultraviolence. Stanley Kubrick’s darkly marvelous A Clockwork Orange may not be everyone’s favorite, but it will always hold great appeal for us quirky, hip young things. We get an attractive, charismatic antihero in Alex DeLarge, unforgettably portrayed by young Malcolm McDowell, a smirking deviant who spouts highly quotable Russo-Cockney slang and who has a penchant for Beethoven. He and his droogs, dressed to the nines and hopped up on narcotics, have a malicious itch to scratch, a soulless thirst for depravity and destruction. They slake that thirst with ultraviolence, which includes gang rumbles, assault on the elderly, theft, rape, and murder. In essence, we delight in all the elements which shocked and outraged the generations before us, and if we didn’t watch it in defiance of their moral values, we’d watch it simply because, from script to sets to costumes to soundtrack, it’s so damn stylish.
Children of a desensitized and over-psychoanalyzed age, we empathize with Little Alex as he goes from thrill-seeking reprobate to convicted murderer to insincerely reformed prisoner who, in an effort to trick the system and gain early release, agrees to undergo experimental psychological treatment. The Ludovico Method “cures” Alex by conditioning him to be physically ill at the contemplation of violence or, as a cruel side-effect, upon hearing his beloved Ludwig Van. With his dearly-bought freedom he finds he is disenfranchised, displaced, and disillusioned. Deprived of all that once gave him joy, he is victimized and brutalized by the world he once had on a blood-soaked string. But never fear, O my brothers. In the manner of any good story about essential badness, all’s miraculously well that ends well for our Little Alex.
There’s moral issues in there somewhere, about the nature of goodness and freewill and blah blah blah. The book is much better for all that. The appeal of the film is the mirror we fancy it holds up to us: cultured, intelligent youth with a devil-may-care attitude and a lust for extreme overindulgence, punished by society for defying its laws yet ultimately glorified by it for doing so. A Clockwork Orange will always be adored by we vain young intellectuals. So here’s to violence, sex, drugs, and Beethoven rolling back over. Horrorshow.
(This review to appear, edited by Jim Ridley, in a forthcoming issue of the Nashville Scene! Keep your eyes peeled, true believers!)
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Sarah Brown...