Product: A Clockwork Orange [VHS] (1972)
Rating: 1.0
Can an Author Sue a Director For Butchering His Work?
It may sound odd for a story as bleak and satirical as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE sometimes gets, but at its' best, the book is a sort of love letter to the human race, which Burgess saw as being stifled by a bureaucratic, if well-meaning state. His central character, Alex DeLaage, is a brutal criminal, but Burgess makes you understand that in such a regulated state, criminality may be one of the few outlets available for energy and high spirits.But Stanley Kubrick wasn't a high-spirited man. And I doubt he loved humanity. This film is full of his air-conditioned contempt for his fellow human beings, whom he shoots mostly in long shot or distorted, disfiguring close-up, with particular distaste being reserved for the women in this story (Kubrick ALWAYS reserved particular distaste for the women in his stories--you get the feeling he didn't date much in high school?). But such distaste and contempt renders the film almost unwatchable and, therefore, essentially useless. Pop literature, particularly science fiction, was full of the kind of cool, tidy, emotionally neutral material with which Kubrick was most comfortable. It's a pity he didn't realize his limitations and leave the great literature to the grown-ups.The wild card in all of this was Malcolm McDowell as Alex. Despite everything Kubrick did to make the character seem loathsome and unspeakable, McDowell came through with a boisterous, chilling, yet finally very appealing performance. He gives this film the hot breath of life, despite all of the freon dumped on it by the director.