A Stanley Kubrick Retrospective: ‘A Clockwork Orange’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

Sometimes when you try and watch a classic film objectively and try to steer clear of analyzing the themes and concepts that have been examined by so many others when it comes to said film, you realize…there’s simply no way that you can avoid them. Because sometimes, movies are meant to say something about our world and our species and those of us who want to absorb that message pay close attention to it and well, I came to discover that avoiding the deeper themes present in the next movie in my Kubrick Retrospective would be a fool hardy attempt and I instead embraced everything that A Clockwork Orange had to offer.
 
Which quite frankly, I found fascinating. Because in all honesty, this is a film that I don’t revisit of his all that often since it outright makes me uncomfortable with its extensive scenes of violence and torture and rape and well, that’s really the first thing that makes this movie so compelling in its own right, in that it evokes a sense of terror and dread in our hearts when we watch it, drawing us into the story by making this story a train wreck of sorts, that type of mess you simply cannot look away from even though you want to and well, once one gets past the harsher aspects of this film, that’s where its true power awaits us since in essence, this movie is nothing more than a powerful commentary on mankind’s relationship with violence.
 
Yet what impressed me the most about said commentary, is not that it pointed out that we are violent creatures by nature, because that would simply be too easy. No, what makes this film so fascinating is that it takes the time to deeply examine the duality of man and how we view violence as a bad thing, only when it suits us. Now, this is something that is accomplished by way of a long con so to speak, since we spend a lot of time with Alex and his Droogs and bear witness to their all of their terrible acts so that we in fact hope that at some point, Alex is brought to justice, in order to pay the penalty for his crimes because clearly, he’s an awful person right? He’s a thug, a miscreant and a monster and must face justice. 

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But that is merely the setup to the point. Because while Alex has done some awful things, and indeed needs to repay his debt to society, the audience is left in a strange place when it comes to how exactly he is made to do just that. For in essence, Alex is tortured while in prison and there’s little that anyone can say to sway my opinion on that because the whole sequence where his eyelids are forced open and gently wet so that he can witness violent acts in order for the drug to take hold is downright twisted, as is the presentation to show that he’s cured and well, once that torture is complete, the movie can get down to business and reveal its point about mankind and our views on violence.
 
For once Alex is released from prison and makes the attempt to restart his life as a functional member of society, he faces nothing but cruelty at every single turn. His parents have turned their back upon him, his old gang is happy to make his life hell in their new roles as police officers and someone he made suffer badly, is keen to play a game of ‘eye for an eye’ and well, that’s quite the twist when all is said and done. Because it shows us how we are happy to resort to violence in the name of ‘justice’ or to make us whole again and that when we do resort to it, we’re no better than those we judge for it and that cycle of violence and our inability to rise up from it, is what makes our species so incredibly flawed and so incredibly stagnant at times and well, any way you slice it…this movie is downright brilliant.
 
In part because it holds nothing back since we are privy to some supremely twisted sequences of violence at just about every single turn, but mostly because of this subtle examination, one that you have to truly focus upon since Alex’s story is handled at first glance in what appears to be a ‘laisse faire’ style. But make no mistake about it, this is Kubrick’s rumination on who we are as a species, and he offers no easy answers on how to fix our problems, he just wanted to acknowledge our cruelty and he does it well here and this film once again proves Kubrick’s outright genius and oddly enough, this slice of real world horror, would seemingly put a seed into Stanley’s mind to expand upon the notion of fear when he settled in to direct a little movie known as…The Shining...

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