A Clockwork Orange (The movie) (Part II)

Since the philosophy fanatic in me enjoyed the book so much, I decided to check out the movie version. Usually, I’m very apprehensive about the Hollywood version of books (as demonstrated by the recent and rather brutal slaughter of Nicholas Spark’s The Last Song), but in this case, the prominence of classical music and the importance of visual violence in the book lead me to believe that seeing it would give me some deeper insight into Alex’s world.
It was actually quite stunning, o my brothers. I don’t think I so much as blinked during the 133 minutes that film ran. If you don’t trust me (and why should you? Make your own judgments!), just look at RottenTomatoes.com, one of the most reliable movie-rating websites on the internet. It gave Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange a 90% positive rating, a rating that is very rarely give to films (for comparison, The Last Song received a 17% positive rating) . Overall, I have to agree with the 90% positive rating. To make my own review of A Clockwork Orange as organized as possible, I’ve divided my critique into lists of Positive, Neutral, and Negative comments (because as we all know by now, my mind has the tendency to jump in 20 different directions at once and it loves to duke it out with my type A personality).

Starting with the Positives (and they say existentialists are pessimists!):

1. The movie was UNBELIEVABLY faithful to the book (compared to most movies based off of books- I’ll reserve talk about the exceptions for the negative comments section). There were at least fifteen different points at which I could open the novel version and match the movie script word for word. Obviously then, the movie is also very consistent in terms of plot. The movie’s loyalty to the book made it amazing since it translated, rather than reformed, the book into its visual and auditory media format.

2. The soundtrack to the movie makes the dialogue of the movie far superior to its literary equivalent (at least when the words are consistent). The movie uses a combination of classical music and perverted classical music (i.e. what Beethoven’s 9th Symphony would sound like at a cheap carnival) to give greater significance to what is actually going on. There was one scene in particular that I felt just couldn’t be beat by its counterpart in the book. It was in the beginning, when Alex and his droogs are beating up Billyboy and his droogs. The opening blows are accompanied by some childish, perverted take on a great classical work, but as the injuries become more severe, the music becomes frantic, serious, and even chilling. It gives some gravity to Alex’s crimes, especially when Alex needs to stop his droogs from going too far. Music is just as much of a focal point of the movie as it is in the book. I feel that in the movie, though, hearing the music impacts our emotions much more than reading about the music does. (Listen to how music enhances the fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zRtT5jPLA)

3. The NADSAT learning curve is accelerated by a factor of about 100. Hearing NADSAT rather than reading it makes it easier to adjust to because you can hear that all the subtleties in Alex’s speech (tone, inflection, attitude) are the same as they would be in plain old dignified English.

4. The movie’s attention to detail. Stanley Kubrick (the director) is an absolute perfectionist when it comes to creating Alex’s world and I love it. From the clothes to the buildings to the graffiti on murals, the details make Alex’s world much more believable.

5. The mixing of art, violence, and sexual pleasure in that one scene where Alex climaxes at the climax of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. In the book, Alex (ahem) pleasures himself to fantasies of ultraviolence and music. In the movie, the camera flashes between Alex, clips of violence, and interestingly enough, figurines of Christ with blood drawn on Him. All of this combined with the climactic soundtrack of Beethoven’s 9th makes the scene much more powerful, and we can understand for a moment why Alex can equate the aesthetic pleasures of art and violence.

6. Alex’s pet snake. It is awesome. I can’t figure out why exactly the movie staff decided to give Alex a pet snake, but I couldn’t agree more with the choice. When Alex returns home from prison and his parents tell him that A) they can’t house him anymore and B) our slithery friend Basil had an “unfortunate accident” and now lives in that great forest in the sky. My heart broke a little bit at the latter revelation. (Note: Later, I did a quick Google search and discovered that the reason why the movie gives Alex a pet snake is because the actor who plays Alex, Malcolm McDowell, is afraid of reptiles.)

To be continued...

Your faithful existentialist,
~Alexa Semonche~