A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange 1971

Directed by the iconic and often divisive Stanley Kubrick who produced and wrote the screenplay as well as being the director for 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Dr Strangelove and Eyes Wide Shut

Taking place in futuristic Britain, the specific year is not mentioned, but it is assumed that the story takes place in the not-so-distant future. The government is run by a totalitarian super-state. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of a gang that fills it’s evenings drinking drug laced milk and participating in “ultra violence.” When Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder, he volunteers for a rehabilitation program to secure an early release – only to find himself at the mercy of the state and its brainwashing experiment designed to take violence off the streets.

Normally in my reviews I put my thoughts on the acting here because in terms of importance, I find that the quality of the acting and screenplay in a film is a little higher then the direction and cinematography. In my experience, excellent lines delivered well can often save films, whilst it’s tough for great direction to save a ham-fisted script and poor actors. However that is not the case here. I have very little to say on the acting, because? Well I just don’t think it carries the weight that drives this film. There are not many actors in the film in total and only one really needs anything said about him. McDowell gave an performance that was of a high quality. He was believable without being amazing, the character never really got my attention as much as I thought he should, as he along with everyone else seem like supporting cast to the actual look of the film. There are some great British actors of around the same age that could have done an equally good job: John Hurt, Ian McShane or Anthony Hopkins I could have seen in the lead role.

The screenplay was kept quite faithful to the novel. Nadast, the slang used in the novel by Anthony Burgess, is a Russian influenced English that was in the book to give the reader no indication to the time the novel was set in. It for me also doubles as an example of adults figuratively and literally not understanding the youth of the day, which is quite a timeless notion so that plays well.

The direction and cinematography is where the film stands out for me. It really is a work of art, or maybe many works of art. The shifts in tone as the film goes on are brilliant. In the first act we see bright colours, wide shots and lots of lighting, this is how Alex sees life: he is free and can do what he wants. The second act moves to muted close ups, a much duller palate and slow long takes as life slows down as he finds himself in jail. Also, the wide angle lens used to show us Alex’s point of view gives us a distorted look of the world. Very cleverly done.

Stanley Kubrick was known as a taskmaster and the stories of him falling out with the casts of his films are too numerous to include. A man in search of film perfection must have been a nightmare to work with. I’ve never been a massive fan of his work as they’ve nearly all been style over substance for me. All pretty cool to look at, but that is where the attraction ends. I would have definitely put him in the overrated category before today when I was researching the film and learnt what other directors thought of him. Here are a few examples from mainstream directors that I admire:

Martin Scorsese once commented that watching Stanley Kubrick’s films was akin to gazing up at a mountain top. You look up and wonder: ‘How could anyone have climbed that high?

Christopher Nolan said in an online interview “Would I love to do things like that in my own work? Yes. But I don’t think I have the confidence to do that. Which is why there is only one Stanley Kubrick.”

George Lucas said of the film 2001 “It was the first time people really took science fiction seriously. Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie. It is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned.”

He is admired by people who, in my opinion, are artists in the film industry which has changed the way I look at his films. Still a little overrated, but now in the same way I find fashion shows overrated; he presented spectacles that no-one would ever ‘wear on the street’ so what I want to see and need others to do is take his ideas and visions and filter them down for mass consumption. Without him I’m sure there would be no Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher, and that would indeed be a loss for the film world.

Back to the film for the end. I had not seen it for many years before re-watching this week and I enjoyed it so much more than I remember. It certainly will not be to everyone’s taste and it hasn’t made me want to revisit his back catalogue, but I can appreciate it for the piece of art that it is.