My favorite film

Rating: Null/10 (5 December 2005)

I first saw clips of this film as a child and like Sonny's Demise in the Godfather, I found it profoundly disturbingly violent. Let 20 years pass. Seen Eyes Wide. Watched 2001, (was finally old enough for the pace.)
Taxi Driver is a similar film in many ways. The difference, first off, is that Alexander Delarge is unquestionably an evil character, if he manages to play this part and through the role of a lifetime and brilliant acting make us love his performance, Malcolm, and at times sympathize and even identify with Alex.
This is where Alex does represent the troubled yet gifted child which had no place mere centuries ago. A futuristic symbol of industrialism's oversight of what used to be the most important part of society; family and child-rearing. Now it's all about Empires and to quote Queensryche again, "got to make a million bucks no matter who dies."
Alex separates himself through his narrative, where he admits to reveling in ultra-violence, and even fantasies about whipping Christ at his Crucifixion. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver has angst and mental troubles, but his narrative shows he strives to be a good man.
So it is the combination of Mcdowell and Kubrick that get us past the shell and recognize the revelence of the treatment of the mentally unstable or misfits. McDowell and cast give us countless guilty pleasure with the aclairity with which Alex delivers his lines. I love the scene where his truant officer informs him that his victim has died, and Alex almost laughs in spite of the situation, unable to deny the genius with which Kubrick has told this story and captured it's black comedy on film.
Cukoo's Nest came out around the same time as well as Lucas's Thx movie, all dealing with the topic of societies ways of dealing with mental health.
When I first watched the movie, I thought he was still conditioned against the Ninth. It was on the next viewing I realized he had been un-conditioned and could once again enjoy Beethoven. No matter the character of Alex, Kubrick and Mcdowell did indeed pull off one of the best films ever.