Ultra Brilliance

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2004)

The future never looked so much like 1971 than in A Clockwork Orange and that could be a problem if you saw the film in 1971 but looking at it in 2004, the past starts to look the same as the future because both seem worlds away.
A Clockwork Orange is one of my favorite books and one of my favorite films. I like the artificiality of the language in Anthony Burgess' book and I like the artificiality of the sets and the costumes in Stanley Kubrick's film. The fact that Malcolm McDowell is way too old for the role is just another example of the artifice. But McDowell is perfectly mischievous and you can't imagine anyone else as Alex.
The violence is operatically sinister and exhilarating and that can cause problems for satirically challenged viewers. But irony is the most interesting and effective way to tackle the subject of violence
It is well known that Burgess' last chapter was left out of the American book version and out of Kubrick's film and that, without that chapter, the author's point was lost. Burgess believed that a clockwork orange did not exist, meaning that man is not destined to be either wholly good or wholly evil because of control of god or the state - because free will exists. Since the film ends with evil Alex made `good' by the state, and thus being `cured, alright' he is a clockwork orange and that was not the message that the author meant to convey. But it is a powerfully memorable ending to an amazing film.