Review of A Clockwork Orange (1971) by Grant S — 11 Mar 2016

Kubrick's brilliant, darkly-funny, subversive masterpiece.

Set in the UK in the then-present-time but with some futuristic elements to it, a young man, Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell), is the Beethoven-loving leader of a gang of hedonistic, immoral thugs. They beat up people for fun, fight with other gangs, sexually assault women, break into houses and generally terrorise average citizens without any feeling. Then one day, Alex kills one of their victims and is immediately caught by the Police. He is sent to prison for 14 years. In prison he learns of a Pavlov-like experiment to rehabilitate and reprogram incarcerated criminals...

Searingly brilliant. Master director Stanley Kubrick pulls out all the stops in adapting Anthony Burgess' weird, fantastical, thought-provoking and dark novel to the silver screen. While the subject matter is dark, the approach is quite light and funny, resulting in a morbidly humorous movie. Quite Pythonesque at times in its inanity and dark humour.

Not just comedic, there is drama aplenty and many themes at play. There's a wonderfully subversive element to the movie - the government is shown to be a bunch of incompetent nanny-state morons (though we already knew that...), authority figures in general are shown to be out of touch with reality and, on a minor note, we see who tend to become policemen... There's also a theme of free-will vs conditioned response.

Or you could just view it purely as entertainment and enjoy it anyway. It works on many different levels.

An excellent score contributes to the feel of the movie - Kubrick uses it well to set the mood for the scenes. It contributes particularly well to making dark moments much lighter.

There's also the attention to detail we expect from Kubrick, complete with an Easter Egg or two. Spot the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack in the record shop scene...

Excellent performance by Malcolm McDowell in the lead role. He captures the tone of the movie perfectly. Good supporting cast too.

One of the greatest movies ever made.