A Clockwork Orange, 5/5

I am ashamed to say that I’ve lived so long without watching this movie.  But in my defense, I read the Mad Magazine parody when I was twelve.  And it was really good, too.

This movie, as I’m sure most of the readers here know, takes place in the not too distant future, or perhaps an alternate present or past.  Violence and rape are rampant and society is falling apart.  Alex and his gang go out every night to wreak havoc for the fun of it.

Alex is the leader of a gang of four guys who hit up the milk bar at night and they go out and rob, rape, or beat up whomever they can find.  This is all going very well and they are loving life.  Alex is skipping school and then picking up women at the mall and then going out with his Droogs.  Until his Droogs decide that they have a good idea for the big time.  Earning some real money in a robbery rather than the petty cash they get off the people on the street.  Alex won’t stand the dissension and beats his crew, but then they end up going on with the plan anyhow.  His crew betrays him and he is caught by the police.

He is sentenced to fourteen years for murder and works his way into an experimental cure for antisocial behavior, where they condition him against sex and violence in much the same way the army uses disulfiram.  They give him a drug that will make him sick and then they show him movies of sex and violence.

It works very well and he is released into a world where, even though he has changed, no one else has.  And he gets abused by his family, his old friends, and his old victims.

This was a fantastic movie.  It is a movie about juxtaposition and dichotomy.  Alex loves violence, but he also loves Beethoven.  The setting is futuristic, but people are still using typewriters.  The language is full of ‘thees’, ‘thys’, and ‘thous’, but at the same time has new slang peppered in everywhere.  The camera work and acting were superb, particularly from Malcolm McDowell as Alex.  All of the characters though were blown out of proportion.  They all had nervous tics or characterizations that showed what a truly insane world that this was.  It wasn’t that Alex and his gang were living outside of the world, but that the world had created them and created all these other vague monsters, too.

I hear that the book is even better and I am looking forward to reading it in the near future.

Overall:  5/5, I loved it.  A must see, however be aware there is a lot of nudity and violence and I was feeling a little sick myself by the end.