Viking Night: A Clockwork Orange
By Bruce Hall
June 21, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The story is narrated by Alex Delarge (Malcom McDowell in a defining role), a troubled teen living in a near future dystopian England. Alex skips school during the day and usually spends the night hanging out with three of his ignorant, bloodthirsty friends. Let me clarify - Alex is a straight up sociopath. He’s glib, charming, manipulative, cunning, sadistic and completely lacking in the ability to feel pity or remorse. So for fun, Alex and these friends of his get high on drugs and roam the streets looking for people to beat and rob. At home, Alex is a latchkey kid with tragically permissive parents. His dimwitted mother works long hours and is strung out on sleeping pills. His father is suspicious of the boy, but far too timid to confront him. The only adult in Alex’s life who makes an effort is his parole officer, Mr. Deltoid. But Deltoid is a malignant windbag, and Alex sees him as more a curiosity than an authority figure.
So there’s nobody to stop Alex and his crew from stomping beggars and getting into chain swinging brawls with rival gangs. These hoodlums have the run of the city after dark and the crime wave has Britain's government on the ropes with voters. It gets worse after Alex and his entourage brutally assault a famous writer and his wife. The public wants justice, and this will soon impact Alex because his rowdy friends are getting tired of him. Even this bunch of jackasses can see their leader is just a cocky, self absorbed punk. They devise a plan to depose him, and it goes even better than they’d planned. Another home invasion goes awry and Alex accidentally kills an elderly woman. His partners turn on him and leave him behind for the police, who gladly give him a place to live for the next 14 years.
Inside, the cunning lad quickly learns how to play the system. He acts the part of a model prisoner. He starts reading the Bible - because he gets off on the violence in the Old Testament - and convinces the Chaplain to recommend him for an experimental rehabilitation program. In exchange for letting the State “cure” his violent tendencies, Alex will be released 12 years early. Certain he’s got everybody fooled, the boy accepts the offer. He’s not so smug when he discovers that the “treatment” involves pumping him full of drugs and forcing him to watch incredibly graphic films until he becomes physically ill.
Soon, Alex is conditioned to respond this way at the mere thought of violence. He’s then paraded before a room full of politicians where he is subjected to taunting by a bully and tempted by a beautiful woman. Each time he thinks about acting on his violent urges, Alex is paralyzed by the sickness. The experiment is declared a success, and he is released back into the world a “cured” man. The result should be obvious, and if it’s not then the Chaplain spells it out for us: “Goodness comes from within, and is chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man”.
I know, we’re talking about a “man” whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven. But the Chaplain has a point, and the story makes good use of it in the film’s second half, as Alex begins to experience his comeuppance. He discovers how it feels to be the prey instead of the predator, and we of course are meant to understand that forcing someone to do the right thing doesn’t make them a good person. That’s right Rush fans, it’s all about Free Will. Maybe it does seems obvious, but it’s hard to be a victim of violent crime and not wish for laws that would force people to behave. And the world is full of oppressive theocracies that thrive on forcing their citizens to “make the right choice”. The story seeks to remind a culture steeped in liberty that unless everyone has it, nobody really does. But even if you believe that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be on board for the way this movie wants you to remember it. I happen to be a big fan, but I also believe that Kubrick dropped the ball.
The thing is, A Clockwork Orange is meant to be a satire, which puts it at odds with the way Kubrick shot it. The story is poking fun at the way we get into trouble when we fail to couple values with reason or confuse morality with blind compliance. This is also a narrative with a built in sense of irony, and much of it comes from having a psychopath for a protagonist. But in Kubrick’s hands it becomes more of a lurid, voyeuristic fantasy than the book intended. True, we experience the story from Alex’s point of view, and therefore it shouldn’t shy away from showing the full range of Alex’s brutality. But since he is a teenage boy, it is displayed here in the sort of stylized, comic book way boys think about everything. Most of the characters are buffoonish weirdos: Alex’s meathead peers. Deltoid and his oily detachment. There’s even Alex’s victims, who are eventually turned into grotesque self parodies by his aggression. The whole story is already wet with sneering, belligerent contempt for both its characters and a society it seems to view as complacent and hypocritical. I’m not sure Kubrick’s reductionism helps.
He pairs the most of his pivotal scenes with classical music, a technique that worked well for him in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that movie the net effect was grandiose, but here it hovers somewhere between pretentious and well...funny. Fight scenes are staged with an almost slapstick sense of self awareness and combined with the music it’s kind of...well...funny. And it’s not all classical music. During one particularly ghastly assault Alex belts out a Gene Kelly tune as he goes about his business. What he’s doing isn’t funny, but the juxtaposition of humor and horror often feels comical in a nightmarish way. At times you find yourself in the uncomfortable position of trying to suppress a chuckle as someone is being beaten half to death.
Part of me is okay with that because I believe the purpose is to give you a sense of how Alex thinks as only film can. The free form anarchy that goes on in the head of a sociopath probably should be disorienting. Plus, if we’re to believe the outrageously barbaric punishment he eventually receives for his crimes, it’s important to establish the equally outrageous and barbaric nature of Alex’s criminal mind. I guess if you’re into morbid humor and are culturally somewhat liberal, you’ll probably understand Kubrick’s approach. But if you don’t and you’re not, it’ll probably just freak you out.
It’s not that I’m under the impression Kubrick made this film - or any film - for mass consumption. But he had an uncompromising sense of artistic vision, and that kind of thing can often insulate you from good advice. He seemed surprised by the intense scrutiny this film received, and like a lot of brilliant people he decided the reason was that everybody was against him. It couldn’t be that he made a miscalculation and his need to innovate obscured his message. It couldn’t be that the tone of his film was too brazen for many people to find it anything but offensive.
I can handle it, but if most casual moviegoers can’t. But if you haven’t already seen A Clockwork Orange, don’t let that sentence scare you off. Besides, from what I’ve said, I think you already know whether you’re the kind of person who could sit through this film or not. If you’re still reading this, I think when you watch this film you’ll see a disturbing, but thought provoking commentary on criminal justice and personal freedom. And if you’re still watching by then, I thnk you’ll agree Kubrick nailed the ending. The book contained one last chapter that made for a softer finish, compromising the tone of the book. The film benefits from the implications it leaves you with. Incidentally, one of them is that you’ll never be again able to listen to “Singin’ in the Rain” without snickering and hating yourself at the same time.