Sheer brilliance in cinema

Rating: 10/10 (4 December 2001)

Stanley Kubrick explores both the nature of the artist as well as the society that he inhabits in this demented and fascinating film. For, Alex is not simply a hoodlum, he is an artist that works in the medium of pain. Kubrick's film examines the sanitization of his art through societal impositions upon it.
Kubrick's masterstroke is to shoot the actions of Alex and his "droogs" without any sort of object removed moralizing whatsoever. The actions are simply depicted, and it is the viewer who must process the sequences and produce a genuine and unmanipulated response.
Equally important, however, is Kubrick's extreme moralizing when depicting the actions of the state. The actions taken to "help" young Alex come across as little more than a shocking brand of neo-fascism. It is the very fact that we find Alex's behavior distasteful without any manipulation that serves to make Kubrick's point. We must preserve our right to free expression and trust in the people to make the appropriate determination as to the legitimacy of the work. As this film shows, the alternative to such freedoms is far more heinous and brutal than anything that one individual could possibly produce