Evil is the price we pay for the freedom to be good

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2010)

To celebrate my 900th review for IMDb, I turn to another of my favourite films. "A Clockwork Orange", based on Anthony Burgess's novel, is set in a dystopian London of the near-future. The main character is Alex, the teenage leader of a gang of juvenile delinquents, and a young man whose main pleasures in life are rape, ultra-violence and classical music, especially Beethoven. Alex is arrested and jailed after a woman is killed in the course of a robbery carried out by the gang. In jail he volunteers to take part in an experimental programme called the Ludovico technique, which effectively involves brainwashing him so that he will feel horror and nausea at the very thought of committing violent or criminal acts.
The film was produced, directed, and written by that most original of cinematic auteurs, Stanley Kubrick, who finds a very original way of dealing with his subject-matter. Although it deals with social problems such as crime, violence and youth gangs it is not made in the social-realist style which had been a hallmark of the British cinema about a decade earlier. It is about as far from social realism as one can get; it is a nightmare vision of the future rather than a realistic vision of the present.
The plastic-looking futuristic sets, the lurid colour scheme and the deliberately non-naturalistic acting are all intended to create an atmosphere of unreality, as is Wendy Carlos's musical score. Beethoven's music, especially the Ninth Symphony, plays an important part in the film, but for the most part we hear the "Ninth" in a strange, distorted arrangement for synthesiser. When Alex and his friends, or "droogs", have a brawl with a rival gang, this is choreographed, stylised, almost balletic screen violence. The gang wear bizarre costumes (white overalls, bowler hats, codpieces and masks) and speak an equally bizarre slang known as "Nadsat". The distinguishing feature of this private language is the many words borrowed from Russian, either in their original form ("Bog" for "God", "droog" for "friend") or in an anglicised corruption. ("Horrorshow" from Russian "khorosho" for "good", or "Gulliver" from "golova" for "head"). Exactly why English slang should have been colonised by Russian in this way is never explained; if Britain has fallen under Soviet control this is never made explicit in the film.
Burgess gave a number of explanations for his title, one of which is that the word "orange" is a pun on the Malay "orang" meaning "man" or "person". (He had served as a colonial official in Malaya and spoke the language fluently). Alex, after he has been transformed by the Ludovico technique, is a "clockwork man", one who appears human but who is in fact an automaton whose actions and emotions are pre-programmed by others. This gives a clue as to Burgess's intentions in writing his satire.
On the one hand he was concerned that psychiatric manipulation could become a powerful tool in the hands of a totalitarian state, or even a nominally democratic one. The Britain seen here is an increasingly authoritarian society where a populist government is using strong-arm methods to fight crime, not only by brainwashing criminals but also by recruiting thugs into the police force; two of Alex's former droogs later reappear as police officers. The government's opponents, however, are also shown as self-seeking, anxious to exploit Alex's predicament for political gain. The harsh, authoritarian nature of this future Britain is emphasised by the use of uncompromisingly Brutalist modern architecture such as the Thamesmead Housing Estate as a backdrop to many scenes.
On the other hand the Roman Catholic Burgess was also concerned to explore the nature of good and evil and the question of free will. The brainwashed Alex is incapable of committing evil acts, which means that he is also incapable of goodness. These views are articulated in the film by the prison chaplain who points out that goodness must arise from a free moral choice, not from compulsion, and that those who are free to choose good are also free to choose evil. Evil, therefore, is the necessary price we must pay for the freedom to be good.
The choice of Malcolm McDowell as Alex was an apt one, as he is excellent at suggesting both the good and evil sides of Alex's character. In the violent scenes he plays the character with a sort of satanic glee, but at other times he is also able to suggest a surprising innocence, like a demonic choirboy.
The film was immensely controversial when it appeared in 1971, largely because of its graphic depictions of violence, and there were predictable calls for it to be banned. Had it come out in 1962, when Burgess wrote his novel, it doubtless would have been, but the prevailing moral climate had become increasingly permissive in the intervening nine years and the censors were no longer prepared automatically to ban films at the behest of the puritanical. On this occasion, however, the puritans had an unlikely ally in the shape of the director himself, who withdrew it from distribution in Britain, for reasons that have never been clear, and the ban was strictly enforced until Kubrick's death in 1999. For many years this was virtually a "lost masterpiece" in the land where it was made, much talked-about but never seen.
Since 1999, however, the film has been freely available, and we are once again able to appreciate its brilliance as a darkly satirical vision of British society which seems just as relevant today as it did nearly forty years ago and a masterly exploration of theological and philosophical issues. Kubrick made a number of great films, but it is "A Clockwork Orange", together perhaps with "Dr Strangelove", which remains his most personal. 10/10