Product: A Clockwork Orange [VHS] (1972)
Rating: 5.0
A near perfect film, if you can take it
I have read criticisms that call this film a fantasy; well, it is, as all works of fiction are. The point is not the reality of the film (although it does serve as a cautionary vision of the future, and anyone who has visited Detroit would argue we're in it now), but rather the moral question of free will. In fact, the fantasy works best, because the question asked here is, "Should even the most depraved and violent in society be deprived of free will?" Thus the character must be pure evil for it to work. The other issue, the hypocrisy of the government and indeed the society that fostered Alex, is conveyed by the general disorder that society had descended to by the time of the film's setting. The entire film is an exaggeration (in some points not even that) of modern society, like all good satire, and it works on every level.Add to that the following: the acting is phenomenal, the pacing is perfect, the choreography is supurb, and the subtle way Kubrick shot the pre-imprisonment scenes in sharp and vivid color and the post-Ludivico scenes in grainy and muted tones is a brilliant subliminal effect. This film is nothing less than a work of art.That seems as good a segueway as any to say: buy this film as soon as is humanly possible.