Bizarre! Metaphorical! Sardonic!

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2010)

The reasons behind the troubled release of Stanley Kubrick's jet black comedy satire have been misread over the years (I would go so far as to say deliberately mis-written by the tabloid press) meaning that when the film finally received a posthumous UK release it was assumed that the film was previously 'banned' on the basis of copycat incidents. In fact, Kubrick himself demanded the film never be shown in his adopted country out of fear for his family's safety, following hate mail and death threats, the exact content and source of which may never be known.
That is not to say the film is NOT shocking. The violence inflicted by Little Alex (Malcolm MacDowell, fresh off that other anti-establishment classic If...) and his droogs is deliberately, sickeningly glorified; it's as if they are playing out their fantasies as if performing on some great stage, complete with their own Shakespearean-style syntax not spoken by straight-cued Ma 'n' Pa (Philip Stone and Sheila Raynor). One of the opening scenes is a ludicrously exaggerated fist-fight played out in a deserted theatre.
Very few redeeming characters raise their head above the mire. As a result, we, as an audience, are left in the unenviable position of sympathising with the calculated, and later stricken, rapist and murderer at the film's centre. Or rather, we are forced to sympathise with his predicament: stripped of his free will, is he truly human at all? Even HAL 9000, the homicidal super-computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, possessed the power of choice.
Superficially, this is the most dated of Kubrick's films, distinguished by psychedelic art design straight from the turn-of-the-decade era. But we should not allow this to detract from the fact that Kubrick and (original novel writer) Anthony Burgess' future vision is essentially a stylised depiction of logical sociological progression, complete with hyperbole, and just because today's thugs DON'T maraud in bowler hats and over-sized codpieces, spouting pidgin Russian over pints of alcoholic milk, does not make the film-makers' alternative version of reality any less convincing. Nor less relevant: as always, Kubrick's themes are timeless.