Society and the Individual, on the silver screen

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 2011)

Another gem from Kubrick. I'm not going to blow smoke up his skirt about how good the film is because it's a tried and true classic. Instead I am going to refute those reviewers who say the movie is about "getting away with "pure evil" or trying to destroy poor morals. This is not what the movie is about.
What is really done is an in depth look at morality on the individual level. Alex is a "godless" individual who creates his own morality and ethical code in a relativistic and Nietzschean manner. This means hedonism and self-gratification to him, but society sees him as a menace and a violator of the social contract.
Alex is taken under the arm of the state and therefore is subject to the totalitarian, theocratic objectivism that they promote and enforce with an iron fist. Christianity, the driving moral force behind the states ethical code, is forced upon Alex. This mean's to "be crucified instead of crucifying," as the prison father most poignantly puts it.
This black and white type of thinking is anachronistic and dead in the eyes of postmodernist like Kubrick, taking Nietzsche's ideas and putting them into practice here. We see the absolute disgust at the state's approach to morality in Alex, who, like Nietzsche's Zarathustra, suffers nausea when unable to live by his own morals. The state shoves objective Christian morality down his throat and all he can do is gag.
That is the brilliance of this film. It is an introspective epic into the dangers of objective Christian morality.
God is Dead. We must dance and become burning stars.