Violent actions, violent reactions...

Rating: 5/10 (29 May 2004)

According to IMDb.com, Stanley Kubrick had exhibition of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE stopped in the United Kingdom after his family received death threats protesting the film. There is a certain irony here: Kubrick's film at the very least trivializes violence and maybe even glamorizes it, but Kubrick himself didn't seem to recognize the power and the influence that stylized violence has, until it posed a real threat to him and his family.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is undoubtedly a fascinating film to watch. Its creation of a bizarre, pop-art, surrealistic, vaguely futuristic world is, as you'd expect from Kubrick, meticulous and detailed. The film fulfills a daring, conceptually bold vision of a world that is violent, superficial and coldly impersonal. In essence, a somewhat more colorful version of the type of world with which Kubrick became increasingly fascinated. And, as in the Kubrick style, the more obsessively intense the appearance of the film, the more progressively shallow it is thematically and philosophically. Like much of Kubrick's work, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is about how something is said, but not all that interested in what is actually being said.
The film is not just about violence, but about the theatrics of violence. The acts of violence are just that, acts -- i.e., performances -- of violence. Some of this is obvious: a gang rape happens on a theatre stage and another rape is performed as the main character parodies "Singin' in the Rain." Other instances are less obvious, but still apparent as Kubrick takes great pains to control angle, lighting and image to make the attacks "ultra-violent," but in a photogenic way. We don't see the violence as realistic, but in a jazzed up cinematic way. Terrible things happen to otherwise innocent people, but Kubrick isn't interested in their suffering, but in the calculated high his protagonist and his fellow thugs get as they commit crimes -- and the calculated high he wants the audience to have as they watch.
ORANGE's anti-hero is Alex (Malcolm MacDowell). Alex is a rapist and a murder and God-only-knows what else. Kubrick wants Alex to be seen as the film's victim. To this end, Alex is arrested and, during the course of the film, reprogrammed to abhor violence. This, it seems, makes Alex a helpless victim in the real world, much like the helpless victims he terrorized during the first half of the film. The difference is that Alex is the victim of a big, mean, horrible government that has left him stripped of his free will, while Alex's various victims were, well, secondary characters; important as props, but little else. Kubrick seems oblivious to the fact that his argument in favor of individual freedom has little respect for most of its individual characters.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is unique in the world of film, there is nothing quite like it. But, unfortunately, it is very typically Kubrick. Like an architect or interior designer who strives to be an artist, Kubrick creates a world that is stunning visually, but coldly inhospitable. He is so obsessed with having every frame of his movies looking just so, that he neglects to create worlds where there is room for anything as messy as humanity. Even in a film like ORANGE with its defense of free will at any cost, Kubrick himself seems to fear anything as uncontrollable as spontaneity. His plea for free will is cold and mechanical.
Kubrick's message is that being robbed of free will by the state is far worse of a crime than rape or murder or any other act of violence. Which, in theory, is a noble philosophy, assuming you have not been a victim of rape or murder or any other act of violence. Whether in the real world or the reel world, violence always robs its victims of their free will, and in far more oppressive ways than suffered by Alex. It is sad and somewhat telling that Kubrick wants to work up a great deal of pity for a shallow monster like Alex, who essentially is stripped of his dubious right to do harm, but the director can't seem to muster up anything but a passing interest in the people who are harmed by Alex. Kubrick seems to respect Alex as a man of action, albeit antisocial action, over the benign passivity of his victims.
ORANGE doesn't really condone violence, but it doesn't condemn it either. The film sees violence as a moral choice, something for the individual to accept or reject. Which would be fine, if the film also recognized that such choices come with responsibilities and consequences. What most people would see as justice -- Alex losing his freedom to chose his life's options -- the film sees as oppression. Whether you want to see it as chaos, anarchy, amorality or just plain stupidity, the film's seemingly high-minded defense of personal freedom is noble only if you are devoid of basic human compassion. That is, you are willing to place intellectual theory over simple human dignity. I suspect that Kubrick -- like the makers of other "ultra-violent" films, from THE WILD BUNCH to NATURAL BORN KILLERS -- thought he was making a bold statement about our violent society, creating "art," but foolishly he didn't seem to grasp that such "art" is what helps to make a society violent in the first place. Unquestioned violence begets indefensible violence.
Art should be the antithesis of violence and even violent art should mock or repudiate violence. Maybe that idea finally hit home when Kubrick moved to suppress the film in order to protect his family.