It's not about trivialization of violence but the exhilaration of freedom ...

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2011)

"A Clockwork Orange" is the exhilarating journey in the twisted mind of an unrepentant(?) bastard for whom fun is synonym of ultra-violence, sex of rape, and beauty of Ludvig Van's music. This is a masterpiece of self-aware depravity highlighting our very hypocrisy towards violence. We all are pointing our fingers on Alex De Large because we don't have the decent honesty to reckon there's something absolutely magnetic in this character. I admit it, I liked Alex De Large, and I loved "A Clockwork Orange", the movie that told me how bad a man I could virtually become. I'm a good person as society labeled me, but inside, deep in my soul, there's a little something that commanded my brain to be fascinated by Alex De Large.

Still, when I question my own gut reaction to Kubrick's masterpiece, I realize that the most instinctive answer I can give you is that the movie relaxed my very approach to violence or to whatever stink can exude from the darkest sides of my soul. Yes, I enjoyed the movie in the most vicious way. Watching Alex De Large's hypnotic grin while he was driving the Durango with his droogies, I felt like smashing to pieces this computer I'm typing on and go for an old ride of ultra-violence myself. Where? why? I don't know, nor do I feel guilty. In fact, I just feel Alex was a dangerous but no less vivid incarnation of a society deprived of morality. Some might call it dystopia but I don't think we're that far from this model where violence pleases the eyes. Look on TV, check on the Internet, ask yourself why you're fascinated by the spectacle of violence? Despite a dated futuristic setting, the movie was ahead of its time, and a milestone in its detached and decadent depiction of evil.

The young hero is indeed one of the most despicable characters ever portrayed, he beats, rapes, kills with a profound disdain toward humanity compensated by a passionate love for one of its most distinguished representatives: Beethoven. Alex loves his snake as he loves himself, selfishly, carrying all the characteristics of the sociopath, he's genuinely evil and yet he's the most memorable characters of Kubrick's rich filmography. I tried to figure why, and I think after viewing this film multiples times, I came up to the following conclusion: this young hero is a villain who becomes a victim, a passive character allowing us to feel sorry for him. And that's why we forgive ourselves for loving this movie, because it turns the almighty bad to a pitiful being. Or maybe there's more to it.
Indeed, Kubrick's film confronts us to our own vileness by condemning vice or violence when we do find a part of them useful and fun. Another example, while we condemn deviant sex, which of us wouldn't dream of making it with two beautiful girls in the same bed, with Rossini's iconic William Tell overture score pumping his muscles? Alex's decadence is the yang of our boring yin, and if this detached violence can inspire our most sadistic impulses, curing these impulses by associating violence with nauseous sensations is another form of violence confirming the point that victims are not necessarily virtuous ... and that's the crucial subtlety, otherwise, the film would have been just a vast operatic masquerade made by a skillful director just to impress easily impressionable viewers.
Think: what kind of dirty mind would be fascinated by a movie where the character acts so shockingly violent, with a hypnotic music in the background and a beautiful cinematography, where is blood? Where are the broken tooth? Where are the shouts, the cries? And where's that violence that Kubrick feigns to shows but covers with dazzling aesthetics, creating a hypnotic yet dangerously appealing violence? In other words, where is the real violence? the answer is: after the iconic Ludovico treatment. In fact, it even starts with the Ludovico treatment, where Alex is confronted to horrific off-screen images of violence and becomes sick and nauseous, when he sees images of the concentration camps mixed with the music of Ludvig Van. The irony is that we never see those so called frightening images, it's all suggested, but the reaction is so believable thanks to Malcolm McDowell's amazing performance, we feel for him.
But again, the only violence portrayed in a non aesthetic way and rather sadistic way is when Alex De Large gets his comeuppance. When he hits someone, it look choreographed, when he kills the lady, it's off-screen, the rape scene almost looks like a perverse musical number, but when Alex gets it, he gets it. A knock in the nuts, a spit in the face, the most realistic I've ever seen, it disgustingly hits him in the lips, the beating by the bums, the drowning by his ex-friends, the whole Beethovenian torture. Alex becomes such a sympathetic character we feel the punishment disproportionate, forgetting the atrocities he's committed. Why?
Because it's not about the trivialization of violence, which is the most tempting and superficial conclusion, but about the exhilaration of freedom, especially, freedom of will. It's Alex' will to be a better man, to improve, but it's against his will to endure a medical torture that will deprive him from the ability to choose any of the good or the bad path. Being conditioned to follow the right path is a remedy worse than the sickness hence the stylistic difference. It's just as if violence was a pervert yet defining embodiment of our freedom from the way Kubrick magnifies it on screen which makes his accusation of desensitization wrong, the film turns violence into something ugly, but the one with the fascistic and brainwashing undertones because it destroys something even worse than the body, our freedom of will. Kubrick doesn't "excuse" violence but emphasizes freedom.
I stop now: reaching the genius of the script would be like Alex trying to grab these girl's beautiful boobs