An other look a "the joy of life".

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2002)

Alex, played by Malcom McDowell, and his friends roam the nights of London doing anything they want. Beating up whoever makes them angry, getting into fights with other gangs, drives in the middle of a 2 lane road, rapes who ever is naive enough, drinks milk drugs(in Nadsat, the langugue spoke in the movie and book, synthemec, drencrum, and velloset all mean drugs) and finishes his night off with Ludwig Van Beethoven. The police can never catch them or find out who did it, so there are many people doing it. Alex is brought up in the worst society imaginable. His doesn't have screwed up morales, he knows what he is doing is wrong. But he just has pleasure out of other's suffering. His only escape from everything else is Ludwig Van and the Ninth symphony. He think of the strangest thought while listening to it. But what is strange is that when he is imagining all these strange thoughts, there is a shot of, what is now, old televison. But it wouldn't make sense to have it in the future, right? Could A Clockwork Orange be an alternate history of the present instead of a horrible future to look forward to?
Stanley Kubrick changed many things in the book. Kubrick did take out some signifigant things from the book, such as why it is called "A Clockwork Orange". He also changed some things, such as instead of watching Japanese get decapitated and the effects of the WW2 a-bomb during the "treatment", he was watching Nazis making violence. But some dialoge is word for word between the book and movie. Kubrick did an awfully good job writing a screenplay for this movie. Such a the famous beginning zoom out of the Korova milk bar, and the shots of Alex's head during the treatment while he is begging the to stop the movie. My opinion is this movie should have won at least the Academy AwardÂ® for music and costumes.
What can be very strange about this is that it looks so much fun to do you want to try it yourself. That is maybe why it not a good idea for someone to see it when they are young. This movie also attractes many music punks and skin-heads, like "Taxi Driver" does. There is a song by a band called The Choice which made a song about this movie called "Alex". Some lyric in the song are: "Oh Alex, Oh Alex, I'm a lot like you", "I'm so sick of all the silence, I just want my ultra-violence" and "Singing in the rain for all my droogs to hear". They, these punks and others, interprite the movie so much differently, they only like the beginning of it when the gang rapes and beats people.
Nadsat is also an important part of the book and movie. It gives it a interesting twist. The sentences sound very different. For example, the sentence " A nozh scrap anytime you say." It sounds different than "I'll have a knife fight whenever you want." Though the book has a lot more Nadsat in it.
So for all of those who think this is just a science fiction violent movie, why don't you sit down and analyze it. Shot by shot.