Appreciated for many of the wrong reasons

Rating: 5/10 (14 February 2006)

In light of the disturbing number of invective-laced replies, over on the discussion boards, to any post that DARES to criticize any aspect of this film, this seems to me the preferable forum in which to offer a handful of personal observations based on my somewhat less than positive response to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange", a film I believe enjoys a gratuitously inflated reputation; a film of some value, but not the masterpiece so many have hailed it as.
Kubrick sticks to the source novel rather closely here. Except when it suits him, of course. Specific instances of alterations, additions, and subtractions have been oft-cited, so I'll forbear to enumerate them here. My point is that such changes as he saw fit to effect, seem to me decidedly NOT improvements upon Burgess, though Kubrick may have felt some of them were, rather than simply ways to avoid censorship. It seems likely some were made to allow for greater audience sympathy with Alex (and less for his victims); Lord knows an audience can sympathize with a guy who rapes women and kicks winos--but not one who runs over "odd squealing things" the way--in the book, but not in the movie-- Alex and his droogs do on their mad midnight joyride.
The film is uneven, and that, if nothing else, should give people a problem. To me, the script breaks down, roughly, into five acts... ACT I: From the opening, chilling shot of Alex and droogs in the milk bar, through the killing of the Cat Lady, this is the longest and easily the most impressively sustained 'act'. Here, Kubrick keeps things moving and consistently entertaining, through use of camera placement/angles, editing, music choices which--though not necessarily as clever or apt as some have claimed--are good and lively, sets, etc. Not to mention the fearless performance of Malcolm McDowell as Alex. I dislike the sped-up orgy sequence (which reminds me overmuch of "Gilligan's Island"-type slapstick)--indeed much of the humor makes me wince, not smile (think Mrs. DeLarge's false teeth)--but nevertheless it's the first 45 minutes that make the film at all interesting for me. I believe it IS, contrary to many people's defensive protests, a kind of celebration of Alex's demonic energy--a perverse paean, if you will, to his hedonistic and ultra-violent instincts.
It's later, when Kubrick must deal with the violence done TO Alex--his "treatment" and later comeuppance at the hands of former victims--that I find the film bogs down, and never quite recovers. ACT II: Some of the prison scenes (courtyard, library especially) have an almost perfunctory feel; and the scenes back in (ACT IV) Alex's home and the writer's house seem drawn out as if to pad the running time, which was hardly necessary. (And Patrick Magee's excessively histrionic display during his later scenes scarcely helps matters, to my mind.)
In between, the crucial ACT III, consisting of the Ludovico treatment and demonstration scene, I find comes close to realizing what Burgess probably had in mind, and to Act I in terms of sheer cinematic power. I've concluded that Kubrick's decision to leave most of what's on screen during the treatment to our imagination, allowing MM's marvelously expressive facial performance (and impressive screams of terror) to fill the blanks in for us, was indeed correct. During the demonstration scene following, I find some of the spectators' reactions too broadly played, but subtlety cannot have been what the director was after here (or anywhere else, for that matter).
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
That leaves ACT V, commencing with Alex's recovery in hospital from his near-fatal plunge, and concluding with the strange final image of the "cured" Alex, once again enjoying erotic visions to Ludwig van. I'm NOT going to take Kubrick to task for not filming a chapter he didn't even know existed; I'm of two minds myself as to Burgess's decision to include it. What I WILL take issue with is changing the way Alex envisions his being cured. In the film, he's copulating with a stacked female to upper-class onlookers' applause; in the novel, a more violent picture takes form in Alex's mind, "carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cutthroat britva." I doubt that even Kubrick could have brought himself to film as black an ending as THAT, and risk jeopardizing the sympathy for Alex he'd been careful to build up during the last hour. So much, I guess, for the vaunted boldness and uncomprisingness of his vision.
The Ape's verdict: "A Clockwork Orange" is more fruitfully viewed and appreciated as something closer to the "pop art fresco" it's been labeled (or to elevated exploitation piece, for that matter) than to social commentary, philosophical treatise, or art cinema. (In a parallel instance, "The Shining"--to my mind SK's arguable masterpiece--gains when considered as a lavishly mounted, epic-scale take on the traditional tale-told-around-the-campfire, rather than as a study in isolation and insanity.) By ascribing all means of social, moral, and political relevance to Alex's treatment at the hands of the State during the film's second half (wherein the film's purported themes ostensibly lie), many of its ardent fans have done a disservice to Kubrick's most interesting and notable achievementthe juggling act he performs with our emotional responses to on-screen violence during the first act, his daring to seem to celebrate acts that our upbringings and our consciences tell us we must find reprehensiblea disservice from which the film's inflated reputation may not, ironically, recover. Such a fate tends to befall films appreciated for the wrong reasons, and "Orange", I fear, will be no exception.
I would hope my comments might constitute a very small step in another direction. But I doubt it.