It’s funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.
A Clockwork Orange
(1971)
(1971)
It would be reasonable
to ask whether there’s anything left to be said about A Clockwork Orange, so embedded in cult film consciousness is it.
And so raked over in debates on sex, violence, censorship, and whether the
media is culpable in cases of alleged imitations of fictional events in the
real world.
A Clockwork Orange is not a film I particularly venerate, but I most
certainly recognise its enduring power (perhaps for reasons both positive and
negative). The documentary Revisiting A
Clockwork Orange, produced at the time of the film’s re-release in Britain
after nearly 30 years absence, made a cogent argument that it came into being
at a time when the boundaries of censorship were being pushed back and, as a
result of that environment, it’s unlikely that a film of its ilk could be made
today. Because, while it isn’t a particularly violent film, it remains a disturbing
one. Identification with sociopathic Alex isn’t, per se, what marks it out
(there’s been plenty of charismatic villainy since) but the heightened milieu
continues to be utterly original and distinct (even if elements of its
stylistic flourishes have been stolen wholesale by less creative filmmakers and
artists).
I didn’t see the film
for the first time until it had its UK rebirth, and I think I had a certain
reaction to all that hype surrounding it; brilliant filmmaking, but is it
really so in terms of content? Is it saying anything exceptional, that others
haven’t said? Maybe not. I think it was Tony Kaye who commented that even if it
does not, in terms of aesthetic it is nevertheless exceptionally exciting
filmmaking. And it feels that Kubrick at times reveals a sensibility that, even
if it very much reflects the character of the protagonist, is highly
insensitive to his cast (and it’s certainly a fairly well recognised trait of
the director that he puts his actors through the mill to achieve the results he
wants). But that’s also what makes it endure; elements here continue to feel
wrong, and again I don’t mean this in terms of approximation of the perspective
of Alex but in the approach of a filmmaker willing to present material the way
that he does.
Sam Mendes noted that
the film’s landscape is one devoid of other people, besides Alex himself. So
despite Alex’s jeering, mocking voice, in the absence of anyone else to
identify with we are drawn to him. The intimate, confessional tone puts us,
however unwillingly, on the side of the narrator. Kubrick employs this
technique far more effectively than he does with Humbert in Lolita; this may be partly because we
hear more of Alex’s narration. Despite Alex being shown to be more overtly
culpable than Humbert, we identify with him more because he is less remote.
The stylisation of A Clockwork Orange serves to encourage
the audience to swallow many of its more unpalatable aspects. This heightened
sense is evident from the first shot of Alex and the Droogs in the milk bar;
the set and costuming is almost cartoonish, and Walter (later Wendy) Carlos’
music, played on a Moog synthesiser, still sounds extraordinary (Carlos would
later work on Tron).
The sense of heightened
reality is encouraged by Kubrick’s use of wide-angle lenses throughout. He
frequently shoots from low or high positions, which shows off his actors to
exaggerated or cartoonish effect. Seemingly a consequence of a tight budget, he
also works mostly with natural light (something he would do again with the
decidedly more expensive Barry Lyndon)
and real locations. So we are exposed to an environment that feels both starkly
real and at once stylised, and it’s all the more unsettling for that. The shot of Alex and his Droogs out on a joy
ride draws attention to the artifice of its back projection and encourages the
sense that we are privy to Alex’s world and point of view. While this works
undeniably well at times, it also comes across as an excuse to justify some of
the film’s more crass indulgences (most notably in its comedy content).
Then there’s the
Russian/cockney mash-up of the Droogs’ slang; at once beckoning in its exotic
distinctiveness and attractive because it is easy to grasp.
The rape scene has
become a focal point for discussion of the film’s most troubling sensibilities.
It has been noted that there is an absence of feeling on the part of the
filmmaker, a disquietingly observant role that makes one question the attitude
behind it (it can’t have been a particularly pleasant experience for Adrienne
Corri, and apparently the first actress employed in the role dropped out; it’s
not hard to understand why). The use of wide-angle lenses creates a
cartoonishness that rubs uncomfortably against the overlit harshness of the
house. There is an abstraction to the violence, through mannerism, the
nightmarish masks worn by the Droogs, and the posing performances (“Singin’ in the Rain”) such that the
scene lacks authenticity, but this has the effect of making it all the more
disturbing (the cutting off of the wife’s clothing is especially
wince-inducing).
The rape scene is shot very much from a male point of view. There is no dwelling on the effect on the victim; we experience more of the husband’s pain than we do his wife. Indeed, we learn later of her off screen death; it is her crippled husband who is given the opportunity to enact revenge, and then as a grotesque caricature.
Like many scenes in the
film, it is protracted beyond the point we would normally expect, played out in
almost real time. And as Mendes noted in the aforementioned documentary, sex in
the film is either violent or comic. He referred to it as a position that was “strange and not entirely healthy”. It’s
arguable that this reflects Alex himself; there is no emotional connection to
others within him. But such a take can also be used to let a filmmaker off the
hook for a multitude of choices that would otherwise be considered extremely
dubious, if not altogether unhealthy. While Kubrick lingers on the rape scene,
he later speeds up the sex that Alex has with two girls for comedy effect.
We have already
witnessed a woman stripped and surrounded by groping, leering men in the
earlier attempted rape on the stage by a rival gang. The camera lingers on the group grabbing at
her, the scene is allowed to play out, making us complicit as passive
observers.
Kubrick surrounds the
Droogs (not just the Droogs) with the paraphernalia of overt sexualisation; the
pornographic plastic of the milk bar, the stylised posters and the crude
graffiti daubed on every wall. One might argue that it is a precursor to
today’s society, washed in easily accessible sexual imagery. Alternatively, it
hearkens to the decadence of Rome (Spartacus,
anyone?)
The attitude to sex in
the film is that of an adolescent; it’s been said that Kubrick wanted to make a
“youth” film in response to the prevailing winds of the era (Easy Rider and its ilk). What he
delivers is an approximation of a youth film; it doesn’t feel as if it is made
by a young filmmaker. It is too calculated for that. The only point in the film
where the attitude to sex of the Droogs is mirrored is the scene with the cat
lady. She surrounds herself with the same sort of fetishist material, but
Alex’s reaction is to accuse her of deviancy. Embracement of sexuality is a
young man’s indulgence, it seems. And for her sins, she is beaten to death with
an ornamental ceramic phallus. Again, this is the kind of grotesque
exaggeration that makes the film an often uncomfortable experience, searching
about as it does for comedic mileage in sexual violence.
The overt comedy
elements of the film are probably the ones most open to criticism of
misjudgement of tone. Certainly, it’s arguable that Kubrick misjudged and
indulged the comedic elements of Lolita.
And if Dr Strangelove seems to be
beautifully observed, let’s not forget that it was originally to have ended
with a pie fight.
The broader slapstick
elements of the film reinforce the notion that this is a comedy. I’d be more
confident in suggesting this element mirrors the attitudes of its protagonist
than defining its genre that way. It’s
certainly at its sharpest (satirically) when dealing with the wheels of
bureaucracy that envelop Alex.
But much of the comedy
is also fairly elementary slapstick. And, as discussed, the camera itself seems
to actively encourage our appreciation of this as an exaggerated and distorted
world, a world of tits and cocks and arses.
From Alex’s passing out
into a plate of Bolognese, to his coming round in a hospital where a nurse with
big knockers is shagging a doctor behind a curtain, to Deltoid’s drinking from
a glass of water with false teeth in (raising the question of which of Alex’s
parents left the house all gummy that morning), the lack of sophistication is
writ large and grins inanely (like Alex himself).
Look at the timing in
the prison induction; the staging has almost musical precision. McDowell is
fearless (fortunate, as he would be called on to make Caligula before the decade was out) and the comedy is deftly performed,
but it is also defiantly crude and lowbrow.
If one is disposed to
make allowances for this, there are still choices that Kubrick makes that seem
a bit on the nose. Alex’s pet snake nestled at the pudenda of the woman in the
painting on his wall is the choice of a film maker who doesn’t know when to
rein it in, who has allowed self-indulgence to get the better of him.
The less self-conscious
comedy often works better; for example, the performer at the show of Alex’s who
bows three times before she leaves stage hits just the right note of
surreality.
Prison Chaplain: When a man cannot choose, he ceases to become a
man.
It might seem as if
debating the “message” of A Clockwork
Orange is like asking to be beaten about the head unsubtly with the an
enormous ceramic phallus. But as others (Mark Kermode, I think) have pointed
out, there’s a strong sense here that any point is secondary to how it has been
dressed up. Almost as if Kubrick said “Right, that’s obvious, now I can get on
with the important stuff. Such as the presentation”.
So, yes, individuality
versus the depersonalisation of the state forms a cornerstone. But how
conscious of that are we when viewing most of the film through Alex’s eyes?
Alex himself leads a band who are controlled and identified as one entity at
the outset. Kubrick certainly gives significant time to the wheels of the
system. From the comedy prison induction to the laborious signing of release
forms for Alex’s treatment.
Then there is the
identification of art as the saviour of the soul. It’s certainly the only part
of the film where you sense it is informed by the filmmaker’s passionate views
(although the scene itself, where Alex is being brainwashed, is fairly intense
anyway). Beethoven is the one thing that raises Alex up, gives him inspiration.
And it is that which will be destroyed completely in order to cure him.
I’m not sure how pervading that position is. Alex’s imaginings merely adapt the content of that great work of literature, The Bible, to his own predilections. Does that amount to a poke at the conflicting moral content of The Bible (and by association the state that upholds it as a creed), or is there an intimation that some art as more worthy than other art, as with the sexualised posters and statues?
It should be noted that
the pastor who opposes Alex’s treatment is probably the only genuinely
sympathetic character in the film, despite being associated with a rather
ineffectual institution. It’s a surprise that he doesn’t have untoward designs
on Alex, because we expect the entire world to be corrupted.
The plot symmetry of
the cured Alex meeting up with those he has wronged is unsubtle, to put it
mildly. Again, maybe this is intentional, playing up the stylisation and
artifice of the film. So Alex is beaten up by the tramp (and friends) that he
(and friends) laid into in the opening scenes. And his former Droogs, now
officers of the law (not very subtle that, either) give Alex a water-boarding
(a jaw-dropping scene, just for the amount of time McDowell appears to spend
under water, although apparently there is a cut). And then we move on to the
house where the rape took place; Alex is playing out a succession of encounters
almost as in a fairy tale.
That scene serves to
emphasise how Alex’s attitudes haven’t changed, just his capacity for action
(although we have already seen this with his visit to his parents and attitude
to the intrusion of Clive Francis – very amusing – as Joe). Kubrick is happy to
mock all-comers politically, so the intellectual liberal pose of the husband
collapses into furious rage on discovery that Alex is the aggressor who
crippled him and sent his wife to en early grave. Kubrick has no real interest
in dealing with the reality of what Alex has done, but then Alex is unable to
perceive the reality either. So it is presented in a heightened form.
This heightened reality
has led some to label the film as belonging to the horror genre. The atmosphere
created by Kubrick has the closest parallels his actual horror film, The Shining. The way he sustains sequences,
uncompromisingly, partly creates that effect. It’s unlikely that anyone would
label 2001 a horror film, but he
employs similar techniques there. And, while we have horror elements as
experienced by Alex (I might say this works because he’s the only character we
are really invited to empathise with, but it’s debatable how much of The Shining relies on audience
identification with the characters to achieve its effect) during his
brainwashing (both physically, with his eyes forced open, and emotionally) we
also encounter the sketchy line between horror and comedy. The husband’s
explosive rage at Alex is a precursor to Jack Torrance’s OTT theatrics a decade
later.
As for the ending, with
Alex contentedly restored to his old capabilities, the point has been made that
this is diametrically different to the place that Anthony Burgess’ book arrives
at. There, Alex makes the choice to change, a choice for “good”, having
outgrown childish ways. In Kubrick’s film Alex is allowed to remain the eternal
bad boy; the individual has won-out, Alex’s moral perspective being ultimately
irrelevant to the society that wished to yoke him.
One point I think
Mendes makes astutely is his suggestion that the film displays a bravery of
attitude on Kubrick’s part. That is, he has faith in his audience to be able to
read A Clockwork Orange in an other
than literal sense (ironically, it is just this faith that would end up seeing
him make the choice to withdraw it from circulation in Britain).
While I
admire the film, I’m not devoted to it. A
Clockwork Orange both impresses and repels, which I’m sure Kubrick would
appreciate being told, and it also rewards revisiting and reappraisal. I should
also disclose that I never felt impelled to put the poster on my bedroom wall
when I was a student.
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