A philosophical film

Rating: Null/10 (6 June 1999)

At first glance, this film may seem like a sick deranged piece of trash shamelessly designed to appeal to our most prurient tastes. Indeed, one of the most disturbing things about this film is that since the viewer is looking through Alex's eyes, there is sometimes a tendency for the viewer to relish the violence as much as Alex does - to laugh along with him as he commits his mayhem. (Yikes!)
Two questions come out of this: Why is Alex made as repulsive as he is? And why is the violence portrayed in such a shockingly graphic manner? (In the book, Alex is loathsome enough, but the brutality is cloaked somewhat in the "nadsat" or teen language, based largely on Slavic roots, that Alex uses to tell his story.) The answer to both of these questions is, I think, that Kubrick (and Burgess) wanted to make the point that no one deserves the inhuman conditioning that Alex went through - not even the cruelest most bestial slime (like Alex). Thus, despite the shocking sensationalistic sex and violence, it can honestly be said that this film is... a philosophical work.