"I was cured, all right."

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2018)

Stanley Kubrick's bizarre, stylish, disturbing, crazy, confusing classic is still a controversy and a film that few truly understand. Kubrick does a great job directing this film, yet doesn't explain it well enough. We clearly see the work of a director in each scene, Kubrick's style and artistic vision evident from start to finish. Yet I feel he struggles in creating a vision that lets his audience actually understand what point he wants to get across. Malcolm McDowell gives a complex, layered performance as Alex the psychopath who enters grueling psychiatric care in order to be cured of his evil and transformed into a productive member of society. McDowell is electric, terrifying one minute, then sweet and reserved the next. It takes a truly gifted actor for us to hate his guts one moment, then empathize with him the next. Stanley Kubrick has good intentions in adapting this creative and visionary tale, yet could have done things differently to have it come across more clearly. He ends the film perfectly, an ending I would argue is one of the most satisfying and unique endings in film history. If Kubrick kept a more clear and less distracting vision from start to finish, we'd have an absolute masterpiece, not a confusing pulp film that leaves more questions than answers.