I am naturally amazed by the phenomenal popularity of this book. Many readers unanimously talk about the incredible elaboration of the language and the saturation of the novel with deep reflections on individual freedom, violence, good and evil. But I didn't see any of that in the book.
Take at least the slang-nadsat that the heroes of the novel speak. In fact, this is just a simple replacement of English words with their Russian translation. That is, the author simply took a dictionary and methodically replaced each, for example, the third word in the speech of the characters with its translation. I admit that the English-speaking reader, for the most part, who then and now does not know Russian, will really be pretty surprised. And I just found it funny. Even the very word "nasty", denoting teenage hooligans, is an ordinary tracing paper from the English "teen". Okay, Burgess knows how Russian numerals end in eleven through nineteen. I also know what's next?
Then, when Alex falls under a new "treatment" program, we are strongly urged to sympathize with the hero, whose psyche was supposedly hopelessly crippled. But let me, his mind is in perfect order. Hatred, anger and craving for violence have not gone away. Becoming to behave like a righteous man, Alex remained a bastard in his thoughts. He just can't handle the physical pain, that's all. The humiliation at the demonstration in the clinic is nothing more than an illustration of the insignificance and weakness of his personality. In his new modus vivendi there is not an ounce of repentance and redemption, but there is not even a shadow of attitudes imposed from outside. Only a purely animal fear of physical suffering. He does not stop thinking about violence and retribution for a minute, he is simply not able to overcome the pain. All the beatings he has experienced do not redeem him in the least, it is as senseless as beating a dog that has bitten you. The animal is not capable of reflection and awareness, which is why rabid dogs are shot. Yes, Alex experienced physical pain equal to the suffering of his victims. But he cannot experience the pain of the soul, there is nothing to hurt.
At the end, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, we are shown a new transformed hero. As if by magic, the bloodthirsty bastard turned into a kind and compassionate person who dreams of a wife, son and a happy family life. It doesn't happen. It can be assumed that the cause of everything is the mysterious course of hypnotherapy that Alex underwent while recovering from fractures. This is much more believable than a sudden, unconditional epiphany. Moreover, neither this new Alex nor his settled accomplice experience grief and suffering because of what they once did. It would be very interesting to look at such a development of events: Alex meets a girl, falls in love, gets married, they have a son, everything is fine and glorious. And suddenly, one evening, a gang of robbers breaks into their house, rapes his wife, kills his son, and beats him severely. But apparently for a schematic division of Burgess, this is too cool.
As a result, it turns out that a course of therapy designed to change Alex turned out to be essentially useless, while something similar to real changes happens for absolutely no reason. Neither the doctor from the hospital, nor his own experience convinced the hero that violence is disgusting. In fact, Alex from the very beginning was a clockwork orange, existing only on primitive reflexes and carnal desires. Treatment only corrected those of them that clearly interfered with society. The personality of the hero did not suffer from this, because, in fact, it did not exist. People like Alex are only needed to work in the mines or as cannon fodder in wars. Of course, the new government will also need a certain number of manual executioners to suppress the opposition. The rest is very convenient to train and put, for example, to the machine at the factory. In the brilliant "Equilibrium" by Kurt Wimmer or in the same "Brave New World" by Huxley, potentially full-fledged individuals were brutally suppressed and tortured in the name of some declared higher goals. This is the transformation of real living people into obedient mindless dummies that are so easy to control. And Burgess's is a pathetic parody, and nowhere near worthy of the things mentioned above. The notorious suffering of a hero is not even worth the suffering of an animal in the slaughter. Because the animal is not guilty of anything, unlike a person who voluntarily descended to the level of the beast.
These are the pies.
Score: 3
Teenagers are always rebellious. He is looking for himself and your homegrown morality and dull rules set him the limits that a teenager wants to overcome. My rebellion was reading literature +18
I bought A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess in my first year of law school at the age of 16. I had a budget of 200 pocket rubles for a week and I paid 80 of them for a thin blue book with half fruit, half clockwork. For some reason I thought about the bomb. Something about the design of the book hooked me so much that I decided to squeeze all my needs, but this volume is a must-buy. Let's clarify that I met the film adaptation later, and the film did not affect the visualization of the text.
The book is neither vile nor disgusting. If you want to read something really vile and disgusting - check out the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - a list of fornications that some people commit against others, and read it penetratingly, read the corpus delicti.
A Clockwork Orange is a book of pain. At the heart of the tragedy of the writer and this is the result of self-therapy, the struggle of a person for himself. And what it is - a talentedly built composition of problems and plot moves, penetrating with a sharp needle into the very depths of the brain substance.
Answers to the question about teenage cruelty are clearly not in the realm of fiction. It's too multifaceted to fit in a little blue book even with such a tightly packed audience message. This is for sociologists, psychologists, teachers.
A clockwork orange is just a reflection, a glare of life. Yes, yes, yes, ordinary life, from which each of us is sometimes protected and which we do not encounter, because because.
Alex is the "leader" of a gang of teenagers (you will understand why I checked his status in a little while). He despises his own parents. Father because he is a hard worker, and mother for the limited nature of his life, he considers them philistines and, in general, social plinth. He considers himself to be a different type of person. He has his own social circle, his own slang (which prevents many from instantly understanding what is happening), his own rules of behavior with others.
Alex is a flow conveyor of evil and cruelty: fights, robberies, beatings, racing on city streets, light (and not so) drugs with milk (how touching, huh?), sex, coupled with rape ...
His accomplices do not lag behind him, take as an example.
I disagree that the previous reviewer read the book carefully:
Alex hasn't improved at all. He hid. Like thousands of those who went through prison correction, he returned to society and the author said goodbye to the character (and there are no heroes in this book) almost immediately, showing us (quite symbolically) a very small period of time, but whether Alex was socialized or not is even not a question, simply because there is no one to put it before, except before oneself.
And it is also very strange that the review does not indicate what kind of violence against a person Alex himself underwent. That he was deprived not only of the opportunity to enjoy violence, but of the ability to enjoy even the harmony of music was uprooted - this was the last straw, and the starting point of his suicide attempt and the basis for closing the experimental correction program.
So it turns out that Alex fell into a system of cruelty, more resourceful than his gang-lake, and he is just as raped as his victims. And he returned to a system where there is no “Alex’s gang” subsystem, but there is a “police” subsystem, in which one of Alex’s accomplices now serves (an old acquaintance did not fail to treat his dear friend with an excellent beating, which taught Alex one of the life lessons - not swear and not be surprised).
How will his fate turn out?
The end of the book is open like the gates of Buchenwald.
Why are teenagers violent?
Simply because they can afford it.
Because we allow them to be.
Score: 10
How difficult it is to write a review of a book that “hooked” you and caused a flurry of emotions in your soul. Every decade, sharply social novels appear that almost become the voice of their decade. For some, such a novel is Fight Club, for others, Catcher in the Rye. For me, it's A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. And although this novel is already 52 years old, it has not become outdated and is more relevant than ever now.
This story will be told by an adult, at one time one of the participants in teenage gangs. We will travel to 1962 and see the ruthless and gloomy world of London. A world in which there is nothing sacred left, a world where youth groups rule the streets for which murder, violence, and robbery become their favorite pastime. This is a WORLD WITHOUT RULES!
Alex, the leader of the youth group, and his three friends Pete, George and Tom were very fond of the nightlife. After all, it was at night that all the most interesting events in their lives took place. You could rob someone, beat him and think that you would go unpunished. And it always "rolled". It worked even when the four made their way into the house of a married couple and, in front of the husband, who had previously been brutally beaten, raped his wife. But you have to be responsible for everything in life. In one of the next adventures, our friends climb into the house of an old aristocrat intending to rob her. But she manages to call the police and our main character is in the clutches of the cops, and his so-called friends give a tear. The one who has always considered himself the smartest and most cunning is in prison. Two years in prison will be a very difficult test in his life and, just like in the situation with his friends, he will once again become a scapegoat. In one of the prison fights, a prisoner is killed, and all arrows are transferred to Alex. And now he will have to become a victim of an experiment that kills a person's propensity for violence. Released, he becomes an outcast in the world he once adored. The world has not changed, it is also cruel. Alex has changed. And now he faces the main task of how to survive in this chaos.
In conclusion, I want to say that A Clockwork Orange is one of those rare works that will be relevant in centuries to come. Relevant as long as cruelty, heartlessness and greed remain in our world.
Score: 10
This is the first time I've ever felt this way about the main character. It's a very bold move to tell the story from the perspective of such a bastard. However, let's not stick labels.
Although no, you can't do without kleinya. If we continue to analyze the personality of the main acting character, it is easy to detect the fact that the author tried to make him as ambiguous as possible. Like, it's not pure evil. It also has good features.
So, what are these good traits, thanks to which we could forget all the packosti and fall in love with Alex?
The first is the so-called love of classical music. All the way, GG showed us his rare snobbery at the expense of his musical preferences. We all remember how he loves Mozart, Beethoven (especially the ninth) and despises all this pop kal. But sorry, can this be considered a positive feature? After all, as I understand it, for him music is an additional catalyst for violence and intolerance, contempt for other people who have simpler tastes. Have you already forgiven Alex? By the way, the author uses the same strange feature to make readers feel sorry for malchika. After all, after the operation, he can no longer listen to Ludwig Wang. What a pity…
The second is Alex's mental superiority over his koreshamy. But was she really? Or did he just think so? Personally, I don't find anything kayfovogo about it. I do not see this intelligence point blank. Karoche, pass by again. For me, GG is completely negative, without the slightest gap.
And only at the end of the book it becomes clear to us that Alex is finally on the path to correction. But will he follow this path? Or is it just a temporary depression, and he will turn vzad? To make it clearer, I'll rephrase the question. Can the monstrous cruelty of nadsatim be justified by age? Are we all like this at this age? Do we all make the same mistakes? And when we get old, we become good? Everything again?
Well, the main question that the author posed to us. The one about free will. Is it possible to correct people with such methods? For me, after that they are no longer people at all, but like that, voniuchie oranges.
All in all, a wonderful novel. And it is wonderful because it gives a lot of fresh pischi for the mind. And, as they say, nena vyazcivo. And of course, many thanks to the author for such an interesting yazick. I am amused that it is already there!
Score: 6
All the outrages described in the book are shown to us through the eyes of a teenager from a street gang. And all the moral and ethical problems raised in the book break down on this concept. I understand - fantasy, freestyle, another example of an alternative future. But I don't trust this kid. Alex is completely fake. There is nothing from street punks in it. It has an author - an educated intelligent person who is trying to create an inner world that is absolutely alien to him. And from the main character some kind of doll is obtained. Yes, Alex's gang beats up someone on the street, they break into the house, rape, go wild ... Only these secondary characters, suffering from juvenile delinquents, Burgess turned out to be much more real and alive. And Alex is an intelligent boy trying to behave badly at the behest of his creator, that's really a clockwork orange.
This fact terribly spoils the whole impression of the book. Burgess didn't have a negative protagonist, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Alex and co are disgusting as disgusting as people kicking other people can be. This is a tracing paper, which today we see on TV all the time, it is too frivolous, if you like, not large-scale for a book. Expect more from a book. What do these guys have inside? How do they think, feel? This author has not been able to describe. Maybe because he didn't know. Still, a person from a completely different environment.
So it turns out that through the eyes of an unnatural doll, we are faced with various problems of morality. Through the eyes of this doll, we must perceive them, comprehend and draw a conclusion. But how can all this be done if we see the problem through a cloudy glass?..
Score: 4
At one time I missed this book, which should have been read a long time ago. Well, it's a must-read book.
Making the reader sympathize with the bastard is not an easy task. In A Clockwork Orange, the hero is not even a scumbag, but a terrible, disgusting monster, morally primitive to the point of complete absence of any kind of morality. A certain intellectual level and musicality inherent in this monster make it even more disgusting and scary. And - nevertheless, the skill of the author is such that you begin to sympathize with this monster. Despite the fact that, having lost the opportunity to cut, beat and rape, he remained the same bastard as he was - a disgusting, prudent sadist.
Runs through the novel. I don't want to take it as some kind of doctrine or philosophizing about resisting or not resisting violence. I think of him as a story about a sadistic maniac living nearby, nearby, in a neighboring house - and that there are such maniacs, and also that, it turns out, I can be made to empathize with this maniac by the power of words. And it is in this that I see the power, the terrible power of the work.
The finale, in my opinion, the author failed, he did not find how to finish. So, the ending that Burgess proposes - turning a scumbag into a layman just because he has matured, seemed to me frankly unsuccessful and immoral, if not immoral. Everything else is beyond praise.
Score: 9
If the author made you hate the main character with all your heart, does this mean that the book is vile and generally rubbish, not worthy of being rated higher than Armadov's chewing gum? If, due to the author's stylistic idea, reading a book is very difficult at first, does this mean that it should not be read at all? If the generally recognized masterpieces of film adaptation are always at hand, is it necessary to waste time on some letters on paper?
And what are the criteria for a good book worth reading? In my opinion, the book should be harmonious, logical, it should maintain a balance between the philosophical, social and psychological aspects. For in view of its ossification of a rather complex genre of dystopia, this balance is doubly important.
Although the psychological aspect may recede into the background, because most dystopias in one form or another talk about the interaction of the individual and the system, and in such a typical situation, the character can also be quite typical. However, A Clockwork Orange is not Zamyatin's "We", Burgess's society is not subject to total control, it is more individual, and, therefore, the hero should be more realistic.
Of course, albeit negative, but the strong feelings that Alex evokes - from hatred to disgust - are an undoubted indicator of the author's skill. And the fact that Alex is a typical product of the system, which means that it would be strange to make him not typical, is quite understandable. But I think Burgess could have made the character more solid and his development more logical. Yes, of course, to convincingly show the unexploited energy of adolescents (Have you ever wanted to yell at the top of your lungs or start throwing everything against the walls?), Albeit in an ugly hypertrophied form, the author succeeded. But serious problems arise with the degree of hypertrophy. Therefore, the ending, in which Alex radically changes his views on the world, attributing it to growing up, causes laughter. You can grow out of childish pranks, such as yelling at your parents, returning to a student dormitory in the morning, carving the name of your favorite group or even light drugs on your skin, but they don’t grow out of murders, robbery and rape, especially those richly seasoned with burnt prison.
Therefore, Burgess's ending seems less like the conclusion of a wiser person than a naive hope, hastily covering up deep fear and uncertainty. So the omission in the psychological aspect of the work directly affects the other two, and it is impossible for someone who claims to write a dystopia to be false in the social and philosophical spheres.
However, we still have to get to the final, but on the way there, the novel cannot but rejoice. Casually, casually, but surprisingly by no means superficial, Burgess raises very curious questions and bitterly states the obvious.
Alex is a disgusting person who loves classical music. How can a disgusting and evil love beauty, or vice versa, a love of classical music be bad? We are somehow used to the fact that if a person is fond of art, he is educated, intelligent, interesting. How is Alex? Another flaw of the author? No, by no means, here Brudgess is very clear. Alex likes the external in music, its effect, sounds, their loudness and richness, not so much evoking emotions as amplifying existing ones. Thus, while listening to music (Brudgess very clearly placed the accents, showing what kind of classics the young bastard listens to), Alex subconsciously uses it, not understanding what he is listening to. Yes, maybe the music gradually changes him and he is a little better than his friends, but not fundamentally. Music for Alex is the same drug, he is chasing the sensations that she gives him, and not for herself.
Who is Alex - a teenager who defines and creates the world around him, or is he, in turn, a product of the system as a whole? Here, in my opinion, Burgess is also quite specific. Alex uses violence, but even more violence is used against him. He is beaten by guards, beaten by prisoners in prison, beaten by guards and doctors, old men and intellectuals, beaten by enemies and friends. Society is saturated with violence, which breeds more violence. An eye for an eye? No, an eye for an eye, and then for what has become sore, has accumulated and demands to be splashed out, because you are weaker, younger, do not resist, ended up under your foot in the end. Alex's victims create the world they live in. From this crime of the protagonist of our time, they do not become less inhuman, but at least they find an explanation for their causes.
Does imposed good become real and is it better than free will? Each reader will find the answer to this question, so let's put it a little differently. Does the bastard who has become helpless forcibly deserve the world into which he was pushed out? No matter how much hatred the guy causes, the world around him is even uglier, so nasty that even for the villainous Alex it is difficult not to find at least a drop of sympathy.
Moreover, he personally aroused the most sympathy in me not when he was beaten again (rightly so, by the way), but when they began to use him for political purposes. No matter how vile the spontaneous violence, the uncontrollable storm of rage, the unctuous Machiavellianism of prudent politicians, who are in power, that “noble revolutionaries” who do not disdain the inveterate bastard, are worse, much worse. Do you feel sorry for the writer whose wife was raped and killed, a writer who still has not lost his humanity, kindness and compassion? But do you feel sorry for the cold unfortunate Lenin, who nurses the humiliated and insulted, sympathizes with him only in order to later use him for his own purposes?
Thus, whether you like it or not, the choice is simple - disgusting Alex or an even more disgusting world.
Surprisingly, with so much violence, A Clockwork Orange is not hard to read. It is difficult at first to wade through the language of the elevenths (oh, an unrealizable dream - to read the book with your eyes about Russian words to hear the unheard!) At first it is difficult, but for some reason not very much through beatings.
In addition to the language, an original but difficult-to-adjust mixture of English and Russian, the novel stands out for its thoughtful composition. Burgess, in the best traditions of his time, guides Alex through his personal Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, dragging the reader into the same place. The “pranks” of Alex and his friends and, accordingly, the disgust felt by the reader at the sight of them, play the role of Hell, a fair, but too mild punishment and a chance to improve, parody the idea of Purgatory, but the Heaven of forcibly kind Alex shows that no matter how bad it is nedodante, blessed he will not survive there.
Bottom line: Still, I can't rate the novel very highly. Not because Alex is disgusting, but the author justifies him (or so it seems to the least attentive readers), not because the text in Latin ripples in the eyes, and not even because it was replicated in largely thanks to the well-known film adaptation. All this just speaks of the high quality of a work that evokes a lively emotional response (it would be much worse if readers were indifferent to Alex and his atrocities, this would show that Burgess was right in the most primitive sense), sparkling with originality of style (try come up with something really original and unused in a craft that is thousands of years old!), which served as the basis for the legendary film (how many adaptations can you list that are at least as good as the original?). But the flaws in psychology and the completely artificial cowardly ending, showing a total inability to give answers to well-posed questions, are already a much more serious accusation.
Score: 7
They say that prison is supposed to correct people. Unfortunately, the prison is not capable of reforming society in the way that those in power would like it to be. And they would love that.
Burgess's gloomy vision of the future was composed of two components relevant to the London of his time: the activity of teenage gangs and the popularity of neobehaviorist theories that sought to explore "psychology without the psyche." The proponents of these psychological ideas were going to practice something similar to what they did with Alex in the book for social correction. By the way, that is why the experiments carried out on the main character are so reminiscent of tests with dogs of Academician Pavlov - the essence is the same. However, Burgess cannot be called a supporter or opponent - the satirical novel is both for youth gangsters and bold almost scientific ideas, and therefore, by itself, raises two topics: growing up and individual freedom, raised in literature over the centuries.
Shorty Alex is a juvenile hooligan roaming the streets in the company of friends, despite the fact that he cannot even be called a young man by age, he is already the head of his company, robs, beats passers-by and even kills. The way Burgess wrote out the attack scenes testifies to a clear understanding of the bully's psyche, who does not consider his behavior wrong at all and spitting in the face of all prohibitions, mocking the old man with books. And he also loves Mozart, Beethoven, and indeed classical music, only the sense of beauty is not directed in the traditional direction, because the beauty for Alex is to beat, kill, rape and bring suffering to others. Already here the author puts a note that people and their views on life are fundamentally different, after which it is expressed in the thought voiced by the commandant of the prison: “Perhaps a person who has chosen evil is in some way better than a good person, but a good person is not in his own way. choice?", which is quite consistent with the spirit of the novel about individuality as the dominant measure of morality.
Burgess wrote a dystopia about the future, only the time in which Alex and his friends live will definitely never come, at least in such surroundings. Written back in 1962, the novel outgrew dystopia and became more of an absurdity about a parallel reality where "something went wrong." There is no clear entourage here, there are only some notes about fashion and customs, about early maturing youth, about technical development. Actually, what is good in a satirical book is that it is never serious, because if Burgess had written a realistic forecast or a “warning”, he would have sunk into oblivion long ago, but this did not happen, and hopefully not only because Kubrick made a movie.
The main highlight is the slang used by the local teenagers, the nadtsatyh generation. The fact that he is so close to the Russian reader is not accidental, not only did the translators try, but Burgess himself borrowed something from the lexicon of the Leningrad dandies, which, combined with the manners of the English "Teddy Boys" and the increasing crime rate in youth circles, gave rise to something new , which can be passed off as a variant of teenagers of the future, immoral, arrogant, dangerous, despising age and intellectual development, living egocentricity in a gloomy era, like their thoughts. Even aesthetics like classical music or a healthy lifestyle, which Alex's company nevertheless adhered to, are embodied here in a negative light, as the inspiration and strength of young robbers. Actually, Burgess was not so far from the truth, in fact, "predicting" the increased popularity of skinheads in the early seventies.
The very name "A Clockwork Orange" is very satirical and even self-critical; Burgess endowed it with a book written by one of the heroes of his novel, the writer F. Alexander, which Alex characterizes in the same way as one could say about the book of Burgess himself. However, unlike F. Alexander, Burgess hardly pursued political goals, making it clear that one political regime is no better than another for an individual who does not need more than a vote in elections. The political pamphlet is not the only pseudo-genre of A Clockwork Orange, the conclusions to be drawn from the novel, and especially from the ending, testify to the conservative views of the author, which is not entirely characteristic of the current underground (although, the devil knows how it was in the 62nd) , but outwardly, even today, it is certainly the same.
If we compare the book with Kubrick's film adaptation, then there is only one significant difference - the director cut off an important part of the ending, where Alex grows up, summing up the film with a recovery scene. Now a book less popular than the film can hardly be imagined in isolation from the visual aesthetics of Stanley Kubrick and the image of Malcolm McDowell, who at the time of filming was twice as old as the book Alex. One thing is certain - without Kubrick, Burgess would not be as famous today, yet the underground often depends on relevance, and if teenage gangsterism remains, then the possibility of the appearance of doctors like Brodsky here is much less today. But the presence in the adaptation of a classic film, a thing, I think, is much more reliable than social views.
Bottom line: a literary underground and a good example of a fantasy book that, despite its obsessive underground, glorifies the good old freedom of the individual, satirically ridiculing all attempts to influence it from the outside.
I have a strange relationship with this film. Not only did I see him quite a long time ago, and not at the beginning somewhere from the thirtieth minute (and this doesn’t bother me at all), I also read the book after watching the film adaptation (but it’s supposed to be the other way around). About the last one. A very, very strange phenomenon: in my mind, a novel and a film cannot in any way, not only unite into a single whole, but even somehow come into contact. Well, I can’t even imagine one part of the other. As if they are two completely different substances, not related to each other at all. Of course, this is not true at all. But for the life of me, I can’t say what is common between them, and what is the difference. What is better and what is worse. Although there is no such thing as a copy that is better than the original, and the film adaptation is the same copy, only lying on a different plane, I cannot guarantee that the film is worse. The book is brilliant, the movie is brilliant and I'm completely confused. Such a simple question turned out to be unsolvable for me.
Book.
A few words about the novel. Futuristic piece interspersed with surrealism with a very interesting history of creation. Written in a caustic and well-aimed style every word, every metaphor and every epithet is chosen in such a way that it is simply impossible to choose better. It is for this style that I forever fell in love with the writer Anthony Burgess master of depicting gloomy urban-ethical realities and "unrealities". In fact, laconic descriptions, due to the abundance of adverbs and interjections, seem cumbersome, without losing their accuracy. In his works, Burgess seems to laugh, even mock, at those disgusting things that he writes about, never turning to the grotesque. They (works) are permeated through with detached mocking bitterness. And of course, one of the most, in my opinion, amazing finds in the entire history of literature nadsat. Here's what I love about Burgess' most famous novel. This is in terms of form. As for the content, no, it's better to write about the film first.
Movie.
Oh, how great it is when any movie you watch is the first creation of a famous director that you have seen! Here they are, freedom from the burden of stale emotions and boundless scope for unbiased opinions! Here I am writing about Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece. I am completely unfamiliar with his other films, and therefore I have no need to consider A Clockwork Orange as "one of ". Here he is in front of me, so integral and absolutely independent. At the same time, I do not take it out of the context of Kubrick's work I seem to remove the foam floating on the surface, so light and independent. Ahem I don't know what Kubrick did in his other films, but after A Clockwork Orange, I'm ready to subscribe to every line that says he's a genius! And again, I can’t say what this film hooked me with. He didn't even swallow me - he swallowed me without chewing. The most remarkable detail obligatory subtitles for the Russian viewer. They make the film even more original, non-standard, exceptional than it would be in their absence. We have the opportunity to seem to be inside the stormy-calm phantasmagoria of the film, drawn there by screams, groans, whispers, laughter, curses of the characters, not distorted by dubbing. Not hidden behind the voice acting, Alex's insinuating voice helps to form the right opinion about the character, who commits his heinous atrocities with an innocent smile and almost childish gaiety in his eyes. Of course, I liked the performance of Malcolm McDowell, who played the role of a fiercely charming moral freak. She just couldn't help but like it. I must say right away his Alex did not cause me hatred. I sympathized with him and pitied him. And I don't want to make excuses for it. I convulsively bow before the talent and static McDowell. But something completely different elusive, hidden catches in the film. Something I couldn't see but only felt. "A Clockwork Orange" - the film is characterized by the same simplicity and brevity as the novel, there is not a single superfluous trifle. There are just no trifles here everything is global and weighty. Only simplicity is diluted with neat bright accents. And the whole film turns into an alluring, attractive, hypnotizing spectacle, deaf and deep, like a column of water. And you don't want to come up to the surface. It made me shudder but turn away from the screen No way! It was beyond my strength. I don't want to go into whether the work of the cinematographer or the editor or someone else made the film so pleasing to the eye; I don’t want to dig and look for that “X” that affected me so much (it would be a useless exercise); I don't want to know what is more interesting, the composition of the film or the conclusion we should draw after watching it. Don't want! I just want to always remember this film, love it and admire it passionately. And further. Someone for the sake of objectivity has to pass this film through the prism of Stanley's other works. And on the contrary, I can now evaluate Kubrick's films (if I ever watch them) according to the stencil set by him - "Orange" whether they reach such heights. How wonderful it is!
And the conclusion Everyone makes a conclusion for himself. Or just enjoying the great spectacle whatever you want. The question, isolated from A Clockwork Orange by critics, is “Is it a way out to deprive the individual of the opportunity to choose whether to be good or bad for him?” is not what the movie is about. In it you will not find the answer to this question. Rather, it is about the fact that evil is invincible, eternal. It is formed by itself and lives according to its own laws. And it is extremely difficult to eradicate it, no matter what you invent. Evil was Alex he was brainwashed, and the unfortunate “kashki”, who had previously suffered from evil, became evil. Everything is relative, everything is closed, and we are all participants in the "circle of evil in society." It seems so.
The criteria for evaluating this very unusual picture remain a mystery to me. If I'm crazy about him, then it must be
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«Clockwork orange»(or "Mechanical Orange"; en A Clockwork Orange) - cult Sergey Rudenok// Theater Ian Haig// BBC // Photo by NEWSru.comHills, Matt, 2002, Fan Cultures, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24024-7. A 1971 dystopian film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess.
The picture consists of reflections on the essence of human aggression on the example of adolescents, on free will and the adequacy of punishment. The main character is a charismatic teenager Alex (Malcolm McDowell), who is in love with Beethoven's music, is the leader of a gang, consisting of three other young people besides him, which is engaged in acts of " ultraviolence”: robberies and rapes, disturbing the peace of civilians of futuristic Britain. Once in prison, Alex voluntarily becomes the object of an experiment to suppress the craving for violence, but when released, he loses his self-defense skills and is unable to counteract external aggression. The story is told from the point of view of the protagonist, who speaks most of the time in en Nadsat, a fictional language that is a mixture of Russian and English, as well as Cockney slang.
The premiere took place on December 19, 1971. 4 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture of the Year, total 5 awards and 16 nominations. The film consistently ranks in the top 100 of the top 250 films on the site. IMDb.
Plot
The events of the film take place in the near future (relative to the 70s). The film tells about the fate of a teenager Alex ( Malcolm McDowell). Alex is very fond of listening to Beethoven, raping women and performing acts of " ultraviolence": beat the homeless, break into decent houses and rob tenants, fight with peers. The film depicts scenes of gang rape in a naturalistic way. Alex tells his own story. For the story, he uses the slang "nadsat" (en Nadsat), which mixes English and Russian words (shortly before writing the novel, the writer visited Soviet Russia).
Having committed a brutal murder and being framed by fellow accomplices, Alex ends up in prison. The prison turns out to be unbearable for him, and he decides to participate in an experimental "treatment" offered by the government, after which you can immediately go free. The “cure” is that a person develops a conditioned reflex to sex and violence: as soon as Alex wanted to have sex or fight, he would have a terrifying, maddening attack of nausea, which even made him want to commit suicide. And as a side effect, Alex also had the same attack with the sounds of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which he previously adored, which served as sound accompaniment to one of the videos shown during the "treatment".
"A Clockwork Orange"(A Clockwork Orange) - one of the most outrageous, experimental and frank paintings of the 20th century from the legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick(Stanley Kubrick). The tape is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by the famous English writer and literary critic Anthony Burgess(Anthony Burgess). Cast: Malcolm McDowell(Malcolm McDowell) James Marcus(James Marcus) Warren Clark(Warren Clarke) Patrick Magee(Patrick Magee) David Prause(David Prowse) and others.
The events of the picture unfold in the near future. Alex(Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of a gang of scumbags who trade in robberies, rapes and attacks on civilians. Alex loves classical music and drugs, and he and his gang are regulars at the Cow Bar. Once they commit a monstrous murder, after which the ringleader Alex is sentenced to 14 years in prison. After serving two years in prison, he agrees to participate in one experiment, after which, according to the prison administration and authorities, he will be able to go free. The essence of the experiment is to suppress the subconscious desire for violence by influencing the human brain. After that, the life of the protagonist changes dramatically.
"A Clockwork Orange"- a chic and frank film that made a real revolution not only in cinema, but also in the minds of ordinary people. The picture was banned in many countries of the world due to the abundance of realistic scenes of violence, sex and murder.
After the release of the picture on the screens, riots began in England, and the director began to receive anonymous death threats. Stanley Kubrick was forced to withdraw the tape from film distribution in the UK. The ban on A Clockwork Orange remained until the director's death in 1999.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by an English writer. Anthony Burgess who wrote A Clockwork Orange after doctors diagnosed him with a horrific brain tumor. The plot of the book is based on the drama that the author experienced in the post-war years.
One of the amazing features of the work is the so-called language "nadsat" (nadsat) - slang, which is actively used by the characters. Many words "nadsata" are borrowed from the Russian language. In the book, these words are highlighted in Cyrillic: maltchik, litso, devotchka, babushka and others.
The name "A Clockwork Orange" comes from an expression once used by the older generation of London cockneys. So they talked about strange and unusual things (“with cockroaches, like a clockwork orange”). In addition, the writer lived in Malaysia for seven years: in the Malay language, the word “orang” means “man”, and in English “orange” means “orange”.
Burgess really liked the film adaptation Stanley Kubrick, and he constantly defended the film against attacks from the press.
The performer of the role of the villain Alex, Malcolm McDowell, had a hard time during the filming: his ribs were broken, his eyes were injured, and once he almost suffocated under water due to a broken breathing apparatus. However, the role of the bastard Alex brought the actor worldwide fame.
Interesting Facts:
- A cult rock band was originally planned for the role of Alex's gang TherollingStones.
- Influence "A Clockwork Orange" can be found in the work of many musicians, artists, filmmakers. For example, the British band Blur made a video for The Universal based on the film Stanley Kubrick.
- The director destroyed all footage that was not included in the film.
- Russian group "B2" filmed a video clip "He ended badly", which very clearly conveys the atmosphere of an epoch-making film.
The film's budget was $2.2 million, and the box office in the US and around the world was almost $27 million.
The picture received five nominations for the prestigious Oscar, but, unfortunately, did not win a single statuette. In 1971 "A Clockwork Orange" was voted Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
A Clockwork Orange, which begins with a frame completely filled with red, very well captures the spirit of its time in general and 1971 in particular. The main theme of those years was cruelty and violence, which viewers around the world witnessed with their own eyes in life and in cinema. By the time the film was released, America was being shaken with might and main by youth riots - more and more evil and impersonal. In Italy, at the same time, the Red Brigades began to operate, which kidnapped famous politicians and staged sabotage at the factories of large corporations. In Germany, the Red Army Faction (RAF) began to set fire to department stores, rob banks and attempt on the lives of dignitaries. In Britain, conflict between the government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging an urban guerrilla war for the independence of Northern Ireland, culminated just in time for the English premiere of A Clockwork Orange. The general background for all this was the American war in Vietnam - one of the most cruel and senseless in the entire 20th century. From real life, violence spread to cinema, which hinted to the audience: if violence is the only way to resolve a critical situation, then it is justified. A Clockwork Orange, unlike other films about violence, which gave the audience the false impression that they were protected from Evil by an insurmountable barrier, proved that everyone is equally to blame for what is happening around. That is why his appearance on the screen caused a scandal and indignation of many viewers.
1. The film that did not suit anyone, but hit the box office
A Clockwork Orange was Stanley Kubrick's highest-grossing film. With a budget of $2 million, the total gross for the film's 10 years of release (1972 to 1982) was $40 million. Despite its commercial success, the content of A Clockwork Orange did not sit well with either the right (conservative audience) or the left (liberal audience). "The film certainly expresses radical political views, but it is difficult to attribute them to any camp." Kubrick simultaneously ridicules socialism and fascism, conservatives and liberals, police officers and human rights activists, two-faced politicians and narrow-minded voters, modern art and the Enlightenment ... The film's ambiguity forced reviewers to rely solely on their own ideas of beauty and horror. Is it art or pornography? Actual satire or immoral story with misanthropic overtones? Audience responses to the film were sometimes diametrically opposed, which was explained by the historical situation: one of the consequences of the sexual revolutions of the 1960s was a complete confusion in the definitions of pornography and obscenity.
2. Screen adaptation with a difference in one chapter
A Clockwork Orange is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by the English writer Anthony Burgess, which gained real fame only after the release of the film. The novel was written in 1962 and expressed the author's (rather conservative) attitude towards modern England. The novel was based on a true dramatic story that happened to the writer during the Second World War, when his wife was raped by four deserters of the American army. The main significant difference between the film and the book is the last chapter, which was thrown out when the novel was published in the USA by American publishers. Kubrick found out about its existence after the start of work, but this did not affect his plans in any way. The optimistic content of this chapter, where the main character embarked on the path of correction, according to the director, contradicted the pessimistic spirit of the film.
3. Clockwork Orange Title: Cockney vs. Behaviorism
According to Burgess, the title of his novel is a reference to "weird as a clockwork orange," which in Cockney vernacular in London means "a whimsical man." However, it is possible that the writer invented this expression himself. The Warner Brothers studio explained the meaning of the title differently: after psychological processing, the main character turns into a "clockwork orange - on the outside he is healthy and whole, but inside he is mutilated by a reflex mechanism beyond his control." For Kubrick himself, the film with an unusual title became a form of correspondence polemic with the American psychologist Frederick Skinner* and his popular book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, where he preached and developed the ideas of behaviorism. This direction in psychology claims that human behavior, his desires and aspirations, are entirely predetermined by the influence of the environment. Therefore, by changing the environment, you can model and change human behavior - just like you can teach mice to dance or make pigeons play ping-pong (the results of Skinner's experiments). “A person needs to have a choice,” Kubrick explained the main idea of his film, “to be good or bad, even if he chooses the latter, to deprive a person of the opportunity to choose means to depersonalize him, to make him a clockwork orange.
- * It is no coincidence that the creators of the animated series "The Simpsons" gave the name "Skinner" to one of their characters - the principal of the Springfield elementary school.
4. The style of the main characters: hello to English skinheads
The outfits of the members of Alex's gang* - a white shirt with bloody eyeballs on the cuffs, white trousers with a boxer's shell covering the groin, army boots, suspenders and a cane-baton with a knife in the handle - are reminiscent of skinhead equipment of the late 1960s. In this way, the authors wanted to connect their present (early 1970s) with an uncertain future, in which the events of the novel take place.
- * The costumes were designed by Italian designer Milena Canonero, who went on to win three Oscars and dozens of other awards for her work on other Kubrick films.
5. Milk bar Korova: the language of the "eleventh"
The name of the establishment where Alex's gang spends their free time has Russian-language roots, as does the slang used by the main characters. To avoid an exact indication of the time of the novel, Burges invented the so-called language of the "-elevenths" (a hybrid of English and Russian languages *), that is, those who are from thirteen to nineteen. It is in this language that the main character Alex tells his story.
6. First victim: beating a beggar
Most accurately, the regressive political atmosphere of 1971 is conveyed by the line shouted out in the film by an old bum who became the first victim of Alex's gang: "People on the Moon, people fly around the Earth, but on the Earth itself, no one cares about both law and order."
7. Main character: a villain and a connoisseur of beauty
The prototype for the image of the main character, as Kubrick explained, was Richard III - the villain from Shakespeare's play of the same name, a criminal artist, an intelligent young man with almost aristocratic manners: “Alex is aware of his own evil and openly accepts it. He does not make a single attempt to deceive himself or the audience about the deep depravity and viciousness of his nature. His image is a frank personification of evil. According to the director's intention, the audience should both fear and hate the character of Alex: he embodies not so much individual social shortcomings (crime, cynicism, etc.), as he embodies the dark sides of the consciousness of human society as a whole. “Most of the audience,” Kubrick noted, “recognizes that it gives rise to a sympathetic attitude towards Alex. Others, on the contrary, experience anger and embarrassment. They can't find the strength to admit it, so they get mad at the movie."
8. Fight with a gang of pig Willy
The fight scene between Alex's gang and the Willy Pigs gang is accompanied by Rossini's idyllic overture to The Thieving Magpie. This technique (estrangement) - the combination of music and images in contrast, due to which the violence on the screen is perceived by the audience in a detached way - Kubrick repeatedly uses throughout the film. He shows the fight itself not in its entirety, but in a montage, snatching out only individual instantaneous phases: a jump towards the enemy, a fall from a window, a headbutt in the stomach, etc. This turns the scene into a kind of stylized ballet, which removes the naturalism of the shots and saves the viewer from the inevitable shock. “Everything bloody, terrible,” noted the Soviet critic Yuri Khanyutin, “is seen, as it were, through a thick, but absolutely transparent glass of time ... There is a cold detachment, outside participation, a sense of distance, even when the largest shots are used”*. On the contrary, this technique gave American critic Pauline Cale a reason to accuse Kubrick of speculation and instilling immunity to violence in the audience: there is no emotional motive behind it, he may feel offended.”
9. Durango 95
The car on which Alex's gang moves, existed in reality as an English small-circulation sports car and was called the Adams Brothers Probe 16 *.
10. HOUSE
In the scene with the attack on the house of the writer, Kubrick emphasizes that in the world of the future, those who are ready to help other people become victims first of all. It is no coincidence that the writer’s dwelling (with the eloquent name DOM), where Alex’s gang penetrates almost without any obstacles, is the only interior in the film where there is no pop art, pastoral paintings hang on the walls, and bookcases are lined with books. Its complete opposite is Alex's apartment, where his indifferent and cruel parents live, or the house of the Cat Lady, who was afraid to open the door to a stranger.
11. "Singing in the rain": testing the method of Ludovico on the audience
The song "Singing in the Rain" was written in 1929 for one of the first sound films of the MGM studio, but its canonical status, performed by the American actor Gene Kelly, acquired its canonical status only in 1952 in the film of the same name. Using a classic Hollywood song, Kubrick in a certain sense mocks * the "good" but hypocritical Hollywood cinema. With Singing in the Rain, the director tests his own behavioral processing method on the audience: “Many, including myself, will never again be able to look at Gene Kelly dancing merrily in the rain without nausea and resentment at A Clockwork Orange, so unceremoniously who took this song.
- * Kubrick's relationship with Hollywood was not very good. This was partly the reason for his emigration from the US to the UK, where American producers could not control his work.
12. "Viddy well, little brother!": subjective camera
Despite the fact that Alex's story is told in the film in the first person, there are a number of scenes in A Clockwork Orange that are shown through the eyes of other characters (in particular, when the writer, Mr. Alexander, looks from the floor at Alex in a mask with a huge phallus nose ). Thanks to them, the narrative acquires an objective and impartial character: “after this, it becomes difficult to perceive any of the characters as a mouthpiece of moral truth*”.
13. After-party at the Korova bar: kitsch is the most important of the arts
The figures of nude women that decorate the Korova bar are a parody of the provocative work of sculptor Allen Jones*, one of the most prominent representatives of British pop art of the 1960s. A whole series of his works consisted of furniture, constructed from life-size female mannequins and standing in slave poses. The result of the development of modern art, according to Kubrick, will be the erasure of the difference between art, kitsch and pornography: “Erotic [sooner or later] will become ** popular art, and erotic paintings will be as accessible as posters of the African savanna.”
14. England: their socialist future
The painted fresco in the entrance of Alex's house is considered one of the evidence that the England of the future has turned into a socialist country, although there are no other direct hints of this in the film.
15. Alex: evil as such
A short scene that emphasizes the image of Alex: the mercenary motive in his crimes is one of the last places. He commits atrocities for the sake of the atrocities themselves, so he is almost indifferent to stolen money and valuables.
16. Beethoven: sadistic fantasies and erotic ecstasy
Alex's love for Beethoven's work is opposed to the attitude towards the music of his contemporaries: for them it does not represent any sacred value. In the world of the future, music can only entertain, performing utilitarian functions (“stimulate the mood”). On the contrary, for Alex, music in general and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in particular is a source of colossal experiences, generating sadistic fantasies and erotic ecstasy. The Soviet newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in 1972 in a review of the film noted: "Education is not an obstacle to cruelty, understanding of music does not exclude sadism. Not a new idea for a humanity that has survived Hitler, who adored Wagner, and sentimental SS men, tenderly listening to Mozart. Not new, but at the same time extremely relevant.
17. Dancing Jesus: by Herman McKink
In order to depict the past, present or future, Kubrick basically never invented anything on purpose and always used existing things. The dancing Jesus sculpture is actually the work of the Dutch artist Hermann Mackinck*. She became part of the interior of Alex's room after Kubrick saw her in the artist's studio.
18. Visions of Alex: Vampire
Beethoven's music evokes a whole set of images from Alex's subconscious: explosions, catastrophes, death of people, but most importantly, the idea of himself as a vampire obsessed with bloodlust and violence.
19. Pop art
According to the English artist Richard Hamilton, pop art is popular (intended for the mass audience), disposable (easily forgotten), cheap, mass-produced, young (addressed to youth), witty, sexy, “with a trick”, charming, highly profitable direction. contemporary art. A Clockwork Orange was filmed at the height of England's influence on world fashion and pop culture, and was Kubrick's only film about contemporary British society. The director's diagnosis of this society is disappointing: in the world of the future, pop art has supplanted and replaced a culture that has fallen into decline. The cramped apartment of Alex and his parents is maintained in pop art aesthetics: bright wallpapers, and realistic portraits of a swarthy woman with big eyes and a prominent bust. True, unlike the house of the wealthy Koshatnitsa, this is more of a proletarian kitsch, personifying bad taste.
20. Music Store: Say hello to Swinging London
The image in which Alex appeared in the music store (Edwardian coat with padded shoulders, tight trousers, cane) evoked in the audience of those years more memories of the recent past than fantasies of the near future. Similar looks were popular in England in the second half of the 1960s, during the Swinging London era*.
- * about "Swinging London"
21. Sex at 2 frames per second: let's do it fast
The group sex scene in Alex's room with two girls from the music store is shown by the filmmakers at a speed of 2 frames per second: in reality, the 40-second scene was filmed for about half an hour. Combined with Rossini's frivolous, hectic overture to William Tell, the bed scene turns into a comic ballet and gives a sarcastic, derogatory assessment of the mechanical sex of teenagers.
22. Feel sorry for no one, no one: Alex beats friends
The cruelty of Alex, who does not spare even his friends, is deliberately excessive. Kubrick explained this by the desire not to let the audience justify the main character after the scenes in which the government puts an inhuman experiment on him: “Given the actions of the government in relation to Alex, it was necessary to emphasize his bestial nature even more. Otherwise, it would lead to confusion in terms of morality. If he hadn't been such a scoundrel, then anyone could have said, “You shouldn't have subjected him to such a psychological treatment; it's so terrible, after all, he's not such a bad guy."
23. Beethoven vs phallus: 0:1
The mortal fight between Alex and the Cat Girl, which takes place with the use of works of art, literally turns into a struggle of Freudian metaphors-symbols: a woman attacks using a Beethoven figurine, a hooligan brushes off a huge porcelain phallus*. Thus, the death of a lady, accepted from a giant phallus, symbolizes the assertion of masculine power in this world.
- * The porcelain phallus is the work of the same artist who created the Dancing Jesus, Herman McKink.
24. New costume: symbol of submission
The classic blue suit in A Clockwork Orange is a symbol of Alex's submission to the authorities and rules that apply in this world.
25. Homosexual connotations
A Clockwork Orange is filled with ambiguous imagery, which at one time made it a source of inspiration for homosexuals. In particular, the allusions to "A Clockwork Orange" were often found in the images of David Bowie - the main androgynous superstar of English glam rock of the 1970s.
26. Alex Reads the Bible: The Ultimate Book on Violence
Despite the fact that Alex is the devil incarnate, he can not be called an atheist (unlike other prisoners). In particular, this follows from Alex's dreams while reading the Bible, when he vividly imagines himself as a Roman soldier beating Christ during the procession to Calvary. According to James Nermore, all this is in perfect agreement with Burgess's idea that there is both carnal and spiritual in man: “I believe in original sin,” Burges explained the background of his novel, “it follows that a person must fall in order to be reborn. At the beginning, the infantilism of Alex is emphasized. He is still helpless - still eating milk. Then he is forced to respond - not to his own, but to external signals. He then tries to commit suicide by jumping out of a window, which mimics the fall of a man. Now its revival must take place, but not through the state. It will happen through the person himself and his ability to know the value of choice.
- * Original sin - so in the Christian tradition they call the guilt that humanity bears for the transgression of Adam and Eve, who sinned in the Garden of Eden.
27. Prison chaplain: closeted gay, clown and mouthpiece of the truth
According to Kubrick, after the release of "A Clockwork Orange" on the screens, the Catholic News newspaper most highly appreciated and supported the film. The director kept the review from this edition as a keepsake and occasionally quoted it to other journalists: “Stanley Kubrick shows that a person is something more than a product of heredity and (or) environment. And, as a churchman friendly to Alex says (ranting and clowning at the beginning, and “at the end”, expressing the main thesis of the film): “When a person is deprived of the opportunity to choose, he ceases to be a person ... The film apparently wants to say that deprivation freedom of choice not only does not save, but completely deprives a person of the possibility of action ... In the name of supporting certain moral values, a change in a person must be born from an internal motivation, and not be imposed from outside. Saving a person is an extremely difficult task. But Kubrick is an artist, not a moralist, so he invites us to decide what is wrong and why, what needs to be done and how it should be done.”
28. The Ludovico Method: Turning Alex into a Moral Robot
The movie show during Alex's Ludovico treatment was an opportunity for Kubrick to demonstrate that screen violence is not responsible for the appearance of violence in life: “There is no clear evidence that the violence that we see in movies and on television gives rise to social violence ... Kubrick said. - An attempt to lay any responsibility on art, as on the source of life, seems to me to be a completely wrong formulation of the question. Art can change the form of life, but not create or cause it. Moreover, it is impossible to attribute a possible force of influence to art, because this is completely at odds with the accepted scientific view of art, which lies in the fact that even in the state that occurs after hypnosis, a person is not able to commit an act that is contrary to his nature.
29. Return home: did not wait
Describing a man of the technical age, the philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm says that he “suffers not so much from a passion for destruction as from total alienation; perhaps it would be more appropriate to describe him as an unfortunate creature who feels nothing - neither love, nor hatred, nor pity for the destroyed, nor the thirst to destroy; it is no longer a person, but simply an automaton. Alex's parents are undoubtedly the kind of automata that Fromm writes about. Their estrangement is so great that they can recognize their son only by focusing on newspaper articles.
30. Death of a boa constrictor: an allusion to the biblical story
After returning home, Alex learns about the death of his pet - a boa constrictor. The death of the snake, which in Christian mythology is the personification of the devil-tempter, sarcastically alludes to the triumph of science, which has triumphed over man and his faith.
31. Beating Alex: Revenge of the Beggars
From prison, Alex returns to a world where other people have the fullness of the qualities and properties that he is forcibly deprived of. And now all those whom Alex once bullied begin to take revenge on him. So it turns out that a person devoid of aggressive instincts, the ability to use violence, cannot survive in this world. And if it is rather difficult to eradicate these instincts, then it is quite easy to arouse them by the very sight of defenselessness. All of his victims easily take on the role of tormentors. According to Kubrick, a person in the modern world has only one alternative - to be a victim or an executioner.
32. Kubrick's bathroom: hello subconscious!
The bathroom in all of Kubrick's films is always the site of the unconscious. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex, without thinking about the possible consequences, lies in the bathroom and carelessly sings the song "Singing in the Rain", by which the owner of the house identifies him.
33. Dinner with Mr. Alexander: "a crime against acting"
In the dinner scene, the actor playing the writer overacts horribly*, but this is no coincidence: Kubrick achieved just such an effect. Examples of such inappropriate behavior can be found in all of Kubrick's later films. It confuses the viewer with its inappropriateness, so criticism of this technique often seems annoying and unfunny. Nevertheless, Kubrick always strived for illogicality in acting, a sharp transition from naturalism to the absurd: “In this respect, he takes a conscious risk; Let's remember the impossibly drawn-out and, generally speaking, insane scene of Alex's return to his father's house, or how Alex, smacking his lips, eats dinner in the hospital.
34. Writer's Revenge: A Movie Without Goodies
The writer not only takes revenge on the helpless Alex, whom he is trying to bring to suicide, but also uses him for political purposes to fight the current government. They don't give a damn about Alex himself. Thus, there are no positive characters in A Clockwork Orange.
35. Minister spoon-feeds Alex
The satirical frame, where the Minister of the Interior himself feeds Alex, crowns the story of the criminal's relationship with the state. The scene is symbolic: society literally spoon-feeds the criminal, and he sneers at the situation. "Good" Alex is persecuted, killed by society, and returning to his natural state of evil, becomes necessary to the country. Ultimately, Alex is the only character to sympathize with, and finds himself at the end of the film in the same position as at the beginning: "The crippled villain returns to the full life of a male."
36. Sex to applause: the final frame
The last shots depict Alex's fantasies inspired by Beethoven. This scene (the only one in the entire film where all participants get a clear pleasure from sex) is just the fruit of Alex's unhealthy imagination, who sees himself as a participant in some kind of theatrical performance. Alex's aggression is accepted and approved by high society, and now he will now sow violence, relying on politicians and the elite.
37. Titles: Hello Alex!
Using the song "Singing in the Rain" once again in the end credits, Kubrick hints at Alex's cure and his return to society as a full member.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1972 Bruskova
