A bit...

...of the ultraviolence for a Sunday night.

Dear friends, your humble narrator is working his way through the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition) and reporting his windy-findings here.

I viddied this film last night, and...well...

Film 36

36.  "A Clockwork Orange" (AFI Rank #70)

Let me just go ahead and qualify myself as something that I am not - and that is a professional film reviewer.  Nor am I a writer.  I'm a dude with access to some bandwidth, and a desire to express my views in that bandwidth.  As such, I inform these things with personal stories, etc.  I mentioned that I took hallucinogenic drugs when I talked about "2001:  A Space Odyssey."  Here's Kubrick again, and here's another film that I watched on hallucinogens back in the day...many times.

Yes.  I've watched this film a lot.  When I was a teenager, I was drawn to the nudity, the unmitigated "guts" (gall) of the film, the dystopian setting, and a whole lot of other stuff.  It was a gutsy film, and I'm fairly certain that I liked it because it did not appeal to those who were "establishment" at the time.  I wore eyeliner (false eyelashes were hard to deal with) on my right eye to school because of this film.  Yeah.  I had some real issues.  This film appealed to the 17 year old version of me the way few others did.

I'm 30 years older, 28 years sober, and I watched this film in its entirety for the first time in a while last night.

I'm also going to treat you like you know that the lead character is Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and that his Droogs are his gang members.  I'm also not telling the story.  Go find it if you need to.  You won't get far in the film if you object to it anyway, so what difference will describing the story make?  Here's a thumbnail.  A bad kid kills someone, goes to jail, and is given, by the government, the opportunity to go free if he's willing to subject himself to a new technique to "cure" his violent nature.  He does, and more bad things happen.  The End.

A few things still appeal to me.  Kubrick is a mad genius.  Every shot in this film feels planned, feels so cinematic that one just has to step back and admire the handicraft on display.  Need an example?  How about the doorbell ringing on the "HOME" of the writer both at the start of the film, and near the end.  Both scenes are set up identically, with the same speed/pace of a dolly shot across the two rooms of the house, one culminating in the writer's wife getting up to answer the door, the other ending with the muscular helper that the writer, now confined to a wheelchair, has to help him in his daily tasks answering the door.  It's careful filmmaking, and it's on display regularly.  The slow zoom out from the Droogs at the Korova Milkbar that opens the film...the shots of Alex as he wanders home, hell...everything.  It all seems so damned intentional...it's amazing.  Unlike the last film I reviewed, it doesn't feel like Kubrick is just recording performances that happen to be in front of his camera as much as he is working those performances into his vision of what this particular scene should make us feel.

"A Clockwork Orange" is a brutal film...perhaps a little romantic in its treatment of that brutality...and one that needs to be seen as a whole, rather than worrying about the niggling details of what is happening.  Yes.  Rapes happen.  Not one, not two, but three (one is during Alex's treatment).  They are really tough to watch, especially Adrienne Corri's scene as the writer's wife.  We also see an ultraviolent rumble between Alex's Droogs and the gang of Billy Boy.  We see a strongish woman get her skull crushed by a phallic sculpture, and we get to see a couple of really graphic beatings.  All of this...however...is mere graphic representation of the film's central message...the disconnection between the government and its people, between generations of family members, and between ourselves and our sanity at times.  Look at Alex's parents.  Dad is wonderfully clueless, and Mother...well...she suffers greatly because of Alex, as mothers do.  Yet...neither of them seems particularly interested in doing anything about their son...in spite of what is hinted at several run-ins with the law.  M & P are in their own world, living in a shabby building, locked away from the rest of the world.

So. I've gone on about how well crafted this film is.  Other things to talk about are the acting.  McDowell is so intensely watchable in this that we kind of forgive Alex for being evil incarnate.  Don't believe that he's Satan?  How about the detail late in the film, when he is attacked by Dim and Georgie Boy (his former Droogs), and they are badge numbers 665 and 667.  Between them is Alex.  His number is 666....right?  Anyway, McDowell's performance here is a wonder.  Always with a wry smile informing his every move, he is a study in intensity, a study in raw energy, sexuality, what have you.  He's a little kid with no filters in a grown up body, and he wreaks havoc on all around him.  It's a terrific performance.  I cannot imagine what it would be in someone else's hands...and I'm glad I don't.  Most of the rest of the acting seems to rely on incredible consistency, and Kubrick would be the guy in charge of that.  The Chief of the Guard at the prison where Alex is interred is especially good.  One other acting performance concerns the Psychiatrist, played by Pauline Taylor.  Alex, ever on the prowl, and ever RIGHT in what he suspects, says that he has had dreams where people are messing around in his gulliver (head) during their meeting.  The imperceptible flinch that the Psychiatrist gives before smiling and saying something to the effect of "lots of people have those dreams" is Class A work.   We catch it.  Alex, for sure, caught it...and his work with the slides immediately afterwards is...hilarious.

Also of note should be the design of this film.  The women mostly have outrageous colored hair (purple, pink, etc.), the Milkbar is amazing, the record store is mindblowing, the costuming is wonderful, the sets are glorious.  This is one really, really stylish film.  Still mindboggling that so much beauty can contain so much ugliness.  Also...the language.  A mix of English with some sort of wacky made up slang for things..."viddy" means "view," "slooshied" means "listened," etc.  It's tough to follow the first time through.  I confess, while on LSD back in the day, I finally understood the language.  I, again, was 17, and probably not as smart as I thought I was at the time, but I "got it" when I was hallucinating.

As I sit here writing this, it occurs to me that I should probably come up with some grand meaning of it all.  I've talked about it above, but I'm not even sure I'm right on that.  Ultimately, it's a story about a bad, bad boy, and how he really doesn't want that to change, nor does he have the capacity to do so.  It's about what we expect as a society of each other, and what lengths we're willing to go to to keep the peace.  It's about overstepping of control in the name of security.

And it's not.

It's Kubrick.

Look.  I'm not going to recommend this film.  I've talked about it above.  If you wish to watch it, fine.  I love it.  I completely understand if you don't/can't.  It's a tough, tough watch.  And I'm warning you...again.  It's a brutal, brutal film.  Really.  Really, really.  Ultraviolent.  It belongs on the list of Top 100 films because it is so very well crafted.  So very well.  Beyond that...it's a brutal film.  I've mentioned that.  Right?

Ebert didn't consider this a great movie.  He didn't like it much. In fact, Roger and I have opposing views.  Hmmmph.  Roger may be on to something.  I have to think some more.  His original review is here.

You know, the more I think about this, having read Ebert...the more I think that the best word for the film is "immature."

And maybe that...THAT...is exactly what Kubrick meant...and what Roger missed.  I wouldn't be surprised.  Bah.