A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Dir: STANLEY KUBRICK
Country: UK/USA

aka:
Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

I should start this review by saying I’m not a fan of Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, which was first published in 1962. I first encountered it as an impressionable seventeen year old at college (this experience seems to be a very common rites of passage, at least in the UK) and I found it to be a reactionary and highly conservative work of Orwellian propaganda. Beneath the layers of linguistic game playing (his use of slang language for the delinquent gang is more irritating than anything else) there beats a right wing heart. This element never totally leaves Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay, especially in the camera’s adoration of the narcissistic fascist pretensions of the films anti-hero Alex. The politics of the film are more ambiguous than the novel though, but both share an interest in stylistic radicalism. In both film and book this helps to mask the socio/political intensions of both authors. However the synergy between Kubrick’s visual and aural experimentation provides a resonance that makes certain set piece sequences far more troubling than anything that appears in the novel.



There is no doubt in my mind that Kubrick’s film is far superior to the novel (something he also achieved with The Shining) and the response to the film by the UK press is an indication that Kubrick had done something with his film that the novel hadn’t. For a start the film possesses a sense of humour that contributes immeasurably to a satirical tone that reminds one of Dr. Strangelove (1964). This created a moral vacuum within the film when scenes of violence are played for slapstick farce; a trick Kubrick would use later in the first half of Full Metal Jacket (1987). The cynicism and nihilism present in the film switches from the gang rape and violence of Alex’s gang to the hypocrisies of the British government and modern psychological procedures. This reversal in the second half of the film is particularly troubling because it repositions Alex as a tragic figure, the voice over narration coming into its own when Alex is in prison. From preying on society (the assault on the tramp, the home invasion sequence, and the death of the cat lady) Alex becomes a victim of it; the problem is that Kubrick does not adjust the way in which he frames and composes the character. Throughout Alex is a monumental character, shot in low wide angles and invested with a power, charisma and arrogance that is only occasionally diminished.



The science-fictional elements of the narrative extend to the odd bit of production design or costume. A plethora of weird costumes and colours (the record store scene), an absurdly low to the ground sports car, the desolate and characterless architecture of Alex’s housing estate, and the chic futurism of the Korova Milk Bar. What science-fiction does provide though is a metaphoric and allegorical dimension which adds even more layers of ambiguity to the principal themes of the film. The cavalcade of saturated hues, cartoonish violence (the fight in an abandoned theatre), and the gallery of eccentric and grotesque characters (Alex’s parole officer for example) gives the film an artificiality; an on screen signifier of aesthetic construction that to me at least has the effect of distancing one from the events of the film. This is why I have never had any problems with the sexually violent scenes. Kubrick does not aim for realism, but continuously emphasises the nature of filmmaking as an artistic concept. The soundtrack contributes much to this and Kubrick continues in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in his attitude to sound design. In both films classical selections are used to counterpoint the screen action. The use of The Thieving Magpie in the home invasion sequence and the clash between high and low culture signalled by Alex’s rendition of Singin’ in the Rain is one the most effective. My personal favourite is a hyperactive electronic version of the William Tell Overture which plays over speeded up footage of a threesome. The classical selections are used in tandem with the synthetic experimentations of Walter Carlos, a further clash of cultures which creates a cool detachment that mirrors the clinical eye of Kubrick’s camera.



In addition to the government (which is depicted as an odious and wheedling force), the psychiatric profession (which is depicted as dark and cruel and merciless in its determination to mete out the Ludovico Treatment) art and culture is also under attack. In Kubrick’s film there are no critical elites to defend high art, this is a world in which any sense of a cultural hierarchy is dirtied and rubbished. Modern art becomes a phallic murder weapon, and the music of Beethoven becomes (along with the bible) a masturbatory aid to fantasies of sadistic violence. It is ironic that Kubrick utilises the full artistic and aesthetic means of cinema in order to articulate this descent into cultural depravity. A Clockwork Orange is a decadent dystopian fable in which the gossamer strands of control that keep society in check have been severed. A world in which right and wrong have lost their distinction and in which the violent and sexual excesses of Alex and his band of misfit followers take on a spiritual grandeur which positions them as heroes in a truly dysfunctional society.

 
© Shaun Anderson 2010