A Clockwork Orange

As I grow older I often find myself thinking back to my first occurrences with A Clockwork Orange. I'd viewed it at a very young age and I remember seeing it and not fully understanding it very well but, I do remember thinking about it a lot after seeing it and having some fascination with the character, Alex DeLarge. This wasn't my very first violent film but, it was among one of the most intriguing as it would for most young adults during any generation. Though it doesn't have the same effect on kids as it did when it was first released, sprawling out gang violence and anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols referral not intended), it still fuels that angst in teens everywhere with the urge to spit in an instructors face or, damage public property what have you. This film in a way I feel developed into an unofficial angst of teenage daydreaming turned into a nightmare for older generations. I can only imagine as a new wave of youth floods the earth when I'm in my fifties and kids having watched this and it having the same effect and how scared I will be of younger more vibrant spirits wielding chains and 2x4's ready to beat me into a bloody pulp.

The film starts out with a close-up of our 'hero', Alex DeLarge (Malcom McDowell), and it slowly zooms out revealing his three 'droogs' all savoring a nice glass of 'vitamin enriched' milk. As the camera zooms out further and the room unravels onto the screen we are listening to Alex's opening monologue, "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence." We soon after are welcomed into the world of an every day's night in the life of these four spirited young men as they mock an old homeless drunk on the sidewalk and then presume to bludgeon him to death continue on to an old broken down theater to battle a rival gang who were preparing to rape a young girl and finish up the night by stealing a Durango 95 to drive out to the desolate country side of London to break into the house of an elderly man and his young wife restrain the man and force him to watch as they take turns raping the poor woman to the tune of Alex's rendition of 'Singing in the Rain.' Later, the quartet decide to rob an old woman who owns a dairy farm for her money. Alex, breaks in to confront the lady and are intertwined in a short played battle where Alex horribly wounds the woman with a large penis sculpture. Alex runs out of the house where his droogs betray him and smash his face with a bottle of milk and leave him for the cops. Alex is taken to jail where he learns his victim has died from her wound and is given a prison sentence. During his term Alex is taken from prison and transfered over to a medical establishment where doctors begin to do a series of tests of a new drug to annihilate the will to choose between good and evil.

Though a different medium from the novel by Anthony Burgess I can't help but, think that the book a bit more effective or disturbing due to the sole fact that in the book, Alex is only 14 years old or so. Stanley Kubrick, as with all his films, delivered an acquiescent slab of colossal sized cinema to ripen with age as it ventures into the future. To me watching his films is like looking at the work of Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh. A Clockwork Orange is such a lasting film to anyone who witnesses it. Laced with controversy even to this day it still is known as one of the few films that your parents refuse you to watch. I remember loaning my friend, Sarah, my copy because she wasn't allowed to watch it but, had recently read the novel. I adore the usage of music in this film. The brilliant musical score of Wendy/Walter Carlos which brings a fresh sound of decay to the atmosphere of the film's setting spliced with the usage of classical pieces by Beethoven who some even consider to be a renegade of music in his time is the perfect blend to the ravishing destructive mind of Alex. The film all around just had a dreary type of attraction to it, and had a very different approach to typical 'science fiction' stories. I guess most people label it under that category but, this is just one of those I don't wish to slap a label on. The metaphoric disembowelment that it generated about the on going fear that the next coming generation will be leaving the world in ruins and the tampering of human morality depicting a being with an organic outside for the rest of the world to view and a mechanical monster on the inside with no feelings of doubt or remorse. And controlled behavior as scientists try to stabilise the methods of psychology with mind controlling drugs and exercises. Not to mention the hidden humor that nearly no one seems to notice. A very different type of film for it's time and to this day is still way ahead of its self.

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