Product: A Clockwork Orange [VHS] (1972)
Rating: 5.0
There are pointless, violent films...
but A Clockwork Orange isn't one of them. All the one star reviews that fixate on the ultra-violent first third of the movie do a disservice to the whole. Unlike Hitchhiker, Friday The 13th Part VII and that ilk, there are ideas expressed in this one. What they are, I suppose, is open to interpretation.The movie is divided into thirds: An introduction to little Alex who seems incapable of moral choice, i.e., a misbegotten clockwork orange. Second, his attempted 'rehabilitation' by a weary society at its wits end ('We've been studying the problem for well over a century, yet we get no further with our studies'), i.e. a modified, misbegotten clockwork orange still incapable of choice. And, finally, the aftermath of the treatment, where society realizes its 'mistake' and returns little Alex to his formal self. The final words of the film drip with irony as little Alex proclaims, "I was cured allright."I haven't read the book in 30 years, but from other reviews I guess that Burgess had little Alex finally realize the error of his ways and choose goodness. I don't know, somehow I prefer Kubrick's ending. I like to believe that I'm good because I don't get off on torturing others for my own self-gratification and not just because it's, like, against society.As for Kubick's depiction of women in the film, remember that this movie was made in 1970 as a futuristic sci-fi thriller. Looking at some Calvin Klein commercials 30 years later, I can't see how he was terribly far off the mark.