Review of A Clockwork Orange (1971) by Frank   — 08 Jul 2014

So I just watched A Clockwork Orange. This is easily the most fucked up film I've ever seen. I'm talking fucked up in a psychological sense of the word. I didn't know what to expect except someone told me that Robot Chicken was a spoof to A Clockwork Orange. That's all I knew of the film. Oh, and someone also told me it was fucked up, but I didn't get around to actually watching it. I can now confirm that it is indeed, fucked up. And it's not because of the first half of the film. *SPOILER ALERT MY DROOGIES!* The first half was just showing Alex being all psychotic and raping/killing, basically a standard fare of slasher-flick type stuff with his group of "droogies". To be honest, the first half of the film wasn't that impressive, aside from Alex's ramblings and his narration, it just didn't affect me as much as I would have liked. And I know it was fucked up what Alex was doing with his group, but it just didn't seem to be any different from your standard fare of horror-thriller killing, touchy touchy, stabby stabby, rapey rapey shit.

But, then, it took a turn. And oh my god I've never been so astounded by a film that took a turn during the second half. This film is basically the definition of what purgatory could actually be in real life. It's frightening and actually quite mind-bending to realize what science could do, and I'm sure this experiment isn't that hard to recreate with the modern science we have now. It's almost haunting, but quite necessary with what Alex had to go through. To be subjected to your own horrors over and over until you get sick of witnessing it. And this half just played off with its first so well that it made me realize what the first half was meant to do. It was meant to show you a different psychotic state of mind while the turning point takes a 180 and makes the world psychotic while turning Alex normal. His world, literally, was turned inside out. He was living in his own Hell that he created. Kubrick, you're a fucking genius and I applaud you for making this film. You are insane, but damn you, you made a fucking masterpiece with this one.

Malcolm McDowell played Alex in the film and he turned in the best performance he's ever put to screen (at least from what I've seen him do). Malcolm, in my opinion, was the most convincing psychotic person that I have ever seen in film. He was fucking frightening, his narration was chilling, and yet, when I witnessed what Alex went through in the second half, suffering for what he's done, a small part of me felt almost badly for him. To see a man be psychotic and witness him purge the evil out of him only to be put out into the world and have the darkness engulf him. The meaning is quite simple and I believe the Priest said it best, it's basically about morals. Should evil murderers, rapists, thieves, or general evil assholes have their moral compass stripped away and have absolutely no will left? No choice on anything? And then to be regurgitated back into the world to have that very world destroy them? It's the perfect amount of suffering they deserve, but how far is too far for us? Are we willing to succumb to their levels, to be the monsters and for them to be our victims? Or, maybe, that's not the case and that they already knew the price when they committed the atrocities. It's left up to you to decide, and this is only brought up once, and that was in the middle of the film. And all of you would probably have said yes, agreeing to strip them of choice before seeing the rest of the film play out. Some of you still probably say yes, again this is two very opposite sides of the same coin and it's all left up to you. I still don't know my answer because in all honesty, this shit was too fucking crazy.

When it ended and I saw Alex's eyes roll up, almost to the back of his skull, I felt almost insane like he did at the last moment of the film. This film literally questions whether we do enough to stop crime, or quite possibly, the opposite, especially with the ending. Maybe it is saying we do far too little. Again, it's all left up to the viewer. I am burned out by this insane film. It's fucking crazy, your fucking crazy Kubrick, the world is fucking crazy.

Damn guys, you really know how to recommend film.

Three for three...

10/10.