A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Shit like this is the reason I can't throw my full support behind this movie.

This is only my second time seeing "A Clockwork Orange". The first time was at some point in the late 90s. Well before that, I was aware of it's reputation of being a stylized, violent masterpiece and hearing it was banned in certain countries (true or not, I  never bothered looking into), but it fell flat with me when I finally got to see it - mostly because of how vocal people were with telling me how great it was. These were the same people, mind you, who would go on and on about how great the Misfits were, and I could never get into them, either. Recently I bought a 3 pack of Kubrick's films on Blu-Ray, so I revisited it today for the first time in almost two decades.

It wasn't as stupid as I remembered it being, but Alex's narration was still mostly annoying to me. I've gotten to know some British people in the past few years by chatting with them online, and I guess they do talk like morons a lot of the time. No clue as to how exaggerated Alex's dialogue was compared to how people really spoke to one another in those days, but it bordered on "baby talk" most of the time. I know people love Kubrick for how stylized his films are, but the costumes and set designs really date this and often distract from the story itself. Sure, we all like seeing milk pour from the teats of ceramic women at milkbars, but what did it have to do with the movie, really? And those white jumpsuits and masks were fucking stupid, admit it. Every time I see those things I think of that shitty punk band, The Adicts. Fuck that band.

Those things aside, the movie was pretty enjoyable. Everybody's seen it by now, so there's no point in recounting the plot. The movie really takes off for me in the second half when he's in prison. The prison guard that looked like Michael Palin and sounded like John Cleese was awesome. The whole bit with the Ludivico Treatment was great and I like that he came into contact with characters from the first half of the film again towards the end. I know Wes Craven said "Last House on the Left" was sort of a remake of "Virgin Spring", but there was a similar sort of thing going on in this movie released only a few years before. Wendy Carlos' score was excellent. The cat lady's low-brow porno artwork was excellent as well (see below).

Alan Clarke probably could have made this book into something I would have enjoyed a whole lot more. I probably wont feel the need to revisit this for another 20 years or so, but I liked it okay. As far as "essential" movies go, this one was pretty "meh". I enjoyed "2010: A Space Odyssey" from this set a lot more. 

3/5