A Clockwork Orange: Holds Up the Mirror

Penetrate the soul of a murderer through his sardonic stare. Enter his world and become his sick perversion. The tormenting chromatic scale of the march, “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary,” opens the movie and defines the world of “ultra-violent” villain, Alex (Malcolm McDowell), in Stanley Kubrick’s incredibly artistic masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange.

With perplexing images of Alex and his clan drinking milk in an eccentric room furnished with naked female mannequins, the movie starts strong. The Funeral March grows in the background and with every ascending note you fall deeper into the character’s “ordinary” world.

One of the most captivating qualities of the movie is exactly how remarkable this “ordinary” world is. Its eccentricity prevails in all aspects, from the strong slang used, to the characters’ unique choice in wardrobe and music. The movie is told almost entirely in Nadsat, “a fractured adolescent slang composed of Slavic (especially Russian), English, and Cockney rhyming slang” (or so says the almighty Wikipedia). Furthermore, only the bold Kubrick could pull off dressing his characters in white long johns with huge codpieces and have them look “cool” as opposed to ridiculous and cheesy.

However, Alex, our hero—as Kubrick seemingly chooses to portray him—is completely out of control, a psychopath who dictates his own rules of life and has an ardent passion for violence. His world fascinates us and we are tempted to believe it’s cool, but in no moment is Alex’s deplorable behavior offered a reasonable explanation. What is the cause of this young man’s “ultra-violent” nature?

By the end of the movie Alex is made to appear a victim of the British police force and the government – he rapes, he kills, he contributes nothing to society, and has absolutely no empathy for you or anyone else in the world, yet, again, Kubrick seemingly loves him.  

But I don’t believe that was actually his intention. Kubrick stirs up a good debate with the film’s highly controversial nature, but not to promote Alex’s behavior, merely to provoke.

Through Kubrick’s direction the story is told with steady and unhurried camera movements, except of course, the famous bedroom sex scene, speeded up to depict Alex’s high libido. Classical music taunts in the background, at just the right moments, and Kubrick’s choice of a wide-angle lens distorts images and gives us, possibly, a look at life through Alex’s eyes.

As opposed to many contemporary movies of fast paced action sequences and highly explicit violence, A Clockwork Orange is possibly much more violent without showing off too much at once, and not hurrying when it does. Kubrick takes his time with the camera and, in doing so, afflicts the brain with a lingering disturbance—one that possibly persists long after the film has ended.

In 1972, a year after the film’s release, a couple of criminal cases in Britain (one being manslaughter and the other rape) were deemed similar to some of the scenes of violence in the movie. When questioned as to the film’s influence on these crimes, Kubrick answered:

“To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures." (Sight and Sound Magazine, 1972)

The film’s thesis revolves around the idea that, by taking away a man’s freedom of choice, you are degrading him to less than human. Regardless of Alex’s wishes to kill and rape, he must be given a choice, if not, what will remain is a society of oranges, working like clockwork. Kubrick, however, does not impose on us a particular way to resolve the issue of characters like Alex in the world. He merely states they have the right to choose, it is up to you to reach the final verdict.

In the end, A Clockwork Orange is, like many of Kubrick’s other films, is so highly controversial that the majority may miss the point…widely. For those who love it for its violence, I do not believe that was the point. For those who hate it for its violence, I do not believe that was the point either. The point is, I believe, to provoke. Provoke the thought that evil lurks within each and every one of us, so that when the audience comes to identify as Alex, their worst nightmares are realized.