A few nights ago, my friend Yoshi and I went to one of the local theater's where they're currently having a classic film festival and saw A Clockwork Orange. I've never seen it on the big screen before, but after viewing it, I realized just how much of an amazing of a movie it is, and how much of a freakin' genius Stanley Kubrick was.
Even if the movie is nearly 35 years old, the idea of its premise still gives the chills. Set in a future Britain where civil society is on the brink of total collapse, young Alex and his gang of droogs nightly roam the city--presumably London--beating people up with no reason, raping devotchkas (women), killing, and then calling it a night. The British government, desperate to restore some semblance of order, snatch Alex after a botched murder and launch him onto a scientific scheme promising total reform. The reform, in reality, is psychological torture, subjecting Alex to endless films of rape, murder, more rape, and finally Nazi rallies and aggression. Alex comes away brainwashed, reformed scientifically but not internally. It later drums into questions regarding morality, and the tools that higher powers will use to coerce power.
What I love about A Clockwork Organge is Kubrick's attention to detail. Being a lover of anything historical, Kubrick had a knack for placing historical items into the most routine of things. Alex's gang, for instance, wear 19th century bowler hats, white shirts, suspenders and trousers that wouldn't have been far removed a hundred years ago if not for the sinister eye mascara, ridiculous cod pieces, and combat boots. Other gangs wear Napoleonic bearskin hats, German military caps and Nazi-era Stahlhelm helmets. The past is never removed, even from an undated dystopian future.
Another thing which struck me was how Kubrick used art to show just how far society had aesthetically gone in the undated year of Clockwork. From the beginning of the film, when we're introduced to Alex and his droogs in the Korova Milk Bar, a slew of dismembered over-sexualized mannequins surround the gang, often crouching down in their giant wigs to show their large breasts or sitting down to spread their legs to form tables (a gang member has his feet comfortably propped up on one as he sips his drugged milk).
Paintings throughout the movie often resemble the mannequins in the Korova. In Alex's room, a painting of a woman joyfully spreading her legs hangs above his bed. In other scenes, paintings in the background depict horrid facial disfigurement and breasts getting cut off. In the future of Clockwork, modern art has transformed into a highly psychosexual form, aesthetically pleasing and widely accepted without any real thought of what it really means perhaps due to the ultra violence surrounding all of society.
Then there's the music. Alex adores all things Beethoven--especially the Ninth Symphony--which we hear throughout the movie. One part which struck me was the haunting synthy opening song, again at the first scene where we meet Alex and co. at the Korova. I later researched that it was hardly a new song, but rather over 300 years old, called "Funeral Music for Queen Mary." Is it really supposed to be thinly disguised funeral music for England? Hmmm...
From the Cockney-Russian slang, to the costumes, to the haunting music, to the politics, A Clockwork Orange is still a violent, shocking, and deeply disturbing film after all these years. And as horrible as it sounds, it's still a feast for movie lovers. It doesn't get old. Even if some of the film screams "that's so Seventies!" it holds its age very well, and still entertains in a strange dark, dark humor sort of way.
What a horrorshow flick.
