A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Warren Clarke, Godfrey Quigley, Anthony Sharp
In the near future (or, perhaps, an alternate past/present), young Alex (McDowell) and his gang of "Droogs" raise hell in London; everything from property destruction, to rape. . . even murder. But the entrenched government has a solution to this criminality: "The Ludovico Technique", designed to wipe away any ability for a degenerate man to sate his wanton, aberrant instincts. At the mere thought of criminal behavior, he becomes sick. But does exorcising the urge for evil truly make a "moral" man? Is a man "good", if his only motivation to act so is due to fear of reprisal?
Despite A Clockwork Orange's enduring popularity, I doubt that the majority of its fans have spent a great deal of time dwelling on the subtleties and implications of the film. Kubrick designed the film to be exuberant; he wanted you to feel good, and then feel bad about feeling good, while watching Alex's wicked deeds. Except the message has been lost - the majority of viewers don't feel bad. Alex as the unleashed rapist Id has, in fact, been quite unironically embraced as the symbol of the atypical rape-cultural college male, recently unleashed (or, foisted) upon the world from his parent's nest.
Kubrick was quite disturbed by the misinterpretation of his film, and, in quite unusual fashion for a filmmaker, pulled his own movie from British theaters, following a series of crimes supposedly attributed to Clockwork's influence.
I see Clockwork as both the end of one trilogy, and the beginning of another. The former I would describe as Kubrick's "Sex and the Modern Man" trilogy: Dr Strangelove, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and, finally, A Clockwork Orange. In Strangelove, the titular character is representative of mankind in the post-nuclear age; neither wholly man nor machine. He speaks excitedly about sex, factory-like in nature, in the post-apocalyptic bomb shelters that mankind will need to survive (a "10 to 1" woman to man ratio - women being "selected for their physical characteristics, which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature"). But in the end, the only thing that can "get him up"(quite literally) is the absolute destruction of the world. In 2001, we're treated to scene after scene of metal phallus entering metal orifice (often to the waltz "The Blue Danube"), until this lifeless imitation of procreative behavior spawns its eventual evolutionary offshoot - HAL, a being who sees itself as superior to all others, but is as soulless as it is intelligent. And lastly, in Clockwork, with the thin veneer of civility stripped away, sex is merely seen as another extension, or application, of violence.
The other trilogy of which I speak was begun by Clockwork, and followed by Fight Club and The Dark Knight. All three films involve a central character split into two (or, in Dark Knight's case, two characters who are halves of a whole), that provide the audience a catharsis through a dark mirror, or destructive Id - but whose themes are also mostly ignored, or misinterpreted. The message of The Dark Knight is not "watch the world burn", nor is Fight Club's that we should be "stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center", nor A Clockwork Orange's "Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well". Quite the opposite, in fact. Dark Knight has an extremely simplistic, not very subtle climax that seeks to display how "mankind is inherently good" or some shit, when the boats decide not to blow each other up in the end (Not sure I concur with Nolan's faith in the human race, but to each their own). Fight Club is, if you're paying attention, about how staring into the abyss causes it to stare back at you - by design, the cultish nature of the oppressed begins to unconsciously parallel the tribal nature of their oppressors. Or, to look at Fight Club another way, it's analogous to the Buddhist parable of enlightenment, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, strike him down" - meaning that, in addition to freeing yourself from the shackles of convention, you must also free yourself of the one who helped you on your path.
One comes away from Clockwork with many themes, and many messages in mind. It certainly doesn't help that there are almost no sympathetic characters (the closest thing to a "moral center" of the film is the church Chaplain - who is also heavily implied to be a pedophile). But what I take away from it is this: Man is not inherently good (I guess this is the Anti-Dark Knight, then). Man (as in "mankind" - I'm not excluding you, ladies) is, at his core, a beast, and society and religion are both aspects of the Ludovico technique; people are kept in line through a fear of punishment, not through a genuine love of their fellow man. There are good men in the world, but they are few and far between.
A dark message to swallow - all the more reason to wrap it in a sugary topping. But what most people end up doing with the film is sucking the sweetness off, and spitting the vitamins on the ground.
FREDERICK OPINES:
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - MASTERPIECE
FIGHT CLUB - GREAT
THE DARK KNIGHT - GREAT
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