Product: A Clockwork Orange [VHS] (1972)
Rating: 5.0
Kubrick and the aethesticization of violence
Another milestone in cinematic history, the dark, disturbing, iconclastic, humorous, Swiftian/Kubrickian view of society, freedom, and the Jungian shadow. As always, a stunning portrait of human nature. Kubrick at once repulses and makes accomplices of the audience. Do we acknowledge our own shadows? McDowell is compelling as the "prime misfit" of a degenerate rapidly approaching facist society. True, Alex is dangerous and terrifying, but he is also, for a time, free, and certainly more human than many of the other characters. If anyone should doubt that a government would employ the "Ludivico" technique, have you heard of the "chemical castration" administered to rapists? At any rate, a disturbing film well worth watching and contemplating.