A Clockwork Orange

The famous 'Kubrick stare' opens Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece A Clockwork Orange. This pervasive stare from Alex deLarge, the main character played by Malcom MacDowell, is an intimidation to the viewer to watch as long as he dares, not to look away from the crude violence and imorality. Kubrick's perfectionist directing adapts Anthony Burgess's novel to the big screen in a terrifying, satirical and theatrical film.

Alex is a British young man, living sometime in a stylised future, who indulges in violent games, rapings and break-ins along with his friends. With his arrogant, impetuous style he manages to overpower all that come in his way until he is betrayed by his taunted friends and given in to the police. In prison, he learns how to manipulate the right people, especially the prison's chaplain, hiding his still deranged thoughts behind his sudden interest on the Bible. Sick of wasting his time there, he volunteers to go through the government's new and fast treatment for criminals – the Ludovico technique, which is suposed to cure the evilness of people and set them free in just two weeks. This turns out to be much worse a therapy than Alex thought it would be, and after two nearly unbearable weeks, he is presented as cured to an audience and set free to the world, which ironically does not accept him back that well, as reformed as he might be.

In Clockwork, Kubrick finally takes violence as his main subject. Its importance has always been present in his work, but it is in this film that he presents a character that is so disfigured by his love of violence that becomes almost inhuman. This character, Alex, lives in a futuristic society where youth has become spoiled and disinterested in anything but making dreadful use of others. Sex and mayhem is what they look for. Alex's group, his “droogies” he calls them, and himself do this in a ritual way. They dress up in white combat suits, with large codpieces attached to their waist, and wear distressing baroque masks when they do some special “horrorshow”. In addition, they use a pun-like language, mixing English, Russian and slang, to stress their style. In fact, this youth's style is not only reflected in the characthers themselves but in the scenarios as well. Every violence scene is shot gracefully in bright colours, accompanied by triumphant classical music, as if it were a ballet dance scene. It is Kubrick's intent to shock the viewer with the actions, leaving him unbiased by any other cinematographic trick he might use. Ultra-violence is, foremost, a sense of style, or rather, a way of life for these characters. The viewer is to be disturbed and offended only by what they are and do.

However, the story goes further, analysing society's reaction to its own ailment. Alex later is put under treatment to cure his evil, by watching repeatedly films of crimes like his own. He is bound in a straitjacket to a chair, his head strapped with wires and his eyelids unable to close by two metal clamps. Also, he is injected with a serum which provokes feelings of death-like paralysis and experiences them while watching these films. It is through this cure, based on the Pavlovian theories on classical conditioning, that Alex is thereby incapable of doing any wrong, since whenever he has strong violent or sexual desire he suffers terrible pain, which can only be relieved by acting properly. Right away, it is due to the prison's chaplain to bring up the ethical question – if Alex has now no choice of whether to do right or wrong, then has he not become less than a human being? Through Alex's testemony, as he narrates his own story, we realise he is not cured at all. He still has criminal impulses to which he cannot respond.

Kubrick leads the viewer steadily through Alex's experiences, through his insane mind and through the derailed society that made him and cannot sustain itself. Alex, however, is unsuspicious of his own mistakes. He is not ever aware of his actions being depraved. He is one of those heroes with which viewers cannot sympathise, though they may understand him. In the end, he is as vicious as he is in the beginning, perhaps worse. This is Kubrick's greatest achievement. The last chapter in the original book tells how Alex is in fact reformed, becoming a good person. However, Kubrick did not want to include it in the film, as it seemed to him that vision was too optimistic and not dramatic enough. The theatrical fashion of the film, its fixed plans, artificial dialogue, jubilous soundtrack and lively colours are not misconstructions – they are Kubrick's instruments to clamp his audience's eyes open and force them to watch his show of consternation.