one of the masterpieces of 70's subversive cinema - Kubrick at his peak

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 1999)

(from 2007): Kubrick's perfect grind-house/art-house "tour-de-force" (I think that term could apply here), on a big screen, is the way to go. Seeing the print emphasized the 'grind-house' aspect, as it was spotty and scratchy as s**t, but it added to the appeal of seeing it in such a lower-east-side movie theater- albeit part of a chain of theaters- and seeing it for the first time since I first saw it (probably I was 14) in full glory of the cinematic experience.
Certain things always pop up again and again from seeing this work of intentionally shocking, precisely over-the-top, and garishly satirical work, and while it's not like my bible or anything, the film emphasizes as always feelings that I hold very true and reticent: that free-will, notwithstanding certain typical procedures of the law if it's wrong, should not be repressed from within (see the Chaplin scenes), at least certainly not in the indifferent, mechanical process of the Ludiviko treatment.
It's not even really a futuristic world so much as, like with Brazil, is sort of environment where present-day fantasy meets reality (or as Zizek calls it, a nightmare), where one ends up feeling sympathy for a little devil like Alex because, quite simply, he has a lot more liveliness, humor and humanity in his form of evil than those of the government propogandists, scientists, or even the 'writer', in their form of self-aggrandizing, larger-scale evil. If anything, he's almost naive when compared to the big scheme of things- a boy getting the ultimate horror-show of a coming-of-age handed to him.
But thinking of Slavoj Zizek again made me double check the reasoning of the ending, and how endlessly clever Kubrick could be that having seen the film countless times I only caught on this this time: that Alex, by accepting the quasi-desperate plea from Frederick to make them look good, is still subverting himself to a form of control, even if now "recovered" from his treatments. The ambiguousness of the ending- of if Alex may or may not return to his life of crime or change his ways- has always been paramount for me, as it's been with many of Kubrick's films, but that little catch kept me thinking as I skipped along after the movie, singing the notorious song- the only one McDowell knew by heart.