An ultra-great movie

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2005)

With his excellent, but violent movies like for instance Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill..., Quentin Tarantino is seen as one of the best directors ever. And yet, what he does isn't all that renewing. Stanley Kubrick did it before him in 1971, more than 20 years earlier, in a decade where violence in movies wasn't yet as tolerated as it is today. So in a way, Kubrick was more ground breaking than Tarantino will ever be (Not that I'm not a fan of QT's work, I certainly am).
This is how the story goes: In the UK, somewhere in the near future, Alex is the leader of a gang of teenagers. He enjoys rape, violence, everything sadistic and ... Beethoven's classical music. They spend their nights terrorizing anyone who they might encounter. One night, they break into the house of a woman with a lot of cats and kill her, but than his gang turns on him and leaves him to the police. He is sentenced to 14 years in prison, but he finds a way to get out of prison soon. The government needs more prison cells for political prisoners and all he has to do is to be a guinea pig for a scientific experiment. The experiment should change violent people into good, sweet and loving people, who are no longer able to even think about violence. Alex immediately agrees, because than he'll be able to get out of prison soon and return to society as a good and honest man. But the experiment has some unforeseen side-effects. He nearly dies and his case becomes a major embarrassment for the government, who arranges to cure him of his cure.
What may be the most thought-provoking about this movie is the contrast between all the violence and the beautiful classical music, composed by Beethoven (I guess the man himself could never have imagined his music would be used in such a context). What you see is awful and the music accentuates that even more, but thanks to the music it also seems to be more "digestible". But don't think this movie is a celebration of cheap violence, it certainly isn't. If you look closer, you'll see that it's against violence, but also against any dictatorial government who thinks it should control its citizens by any means.
Perhaps it is all a bit difficult to understand what I mean and I guess you'll have to see the movie for yourself to fully understand it, perhaps even more than once. Only after several viewings, this movie will get fully through to you. And after you've seen it at least once, you'll agree with me that this is an absolute masterpiece and that it deserves a full 10/10.