A Clockwork Orange (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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Actor: John Clive, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Bates, Patrick Magee, Warren ClarkeBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 136 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 80672
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- A jolting tale of crime and punishment stars Malcolm McDowell as a young neo-punk who becomes the guinea pig for a state-sanctioned cure of his tendency toward ?the old ultraviolence.Running Time: 136 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG Age: 012569806726 UPC: 012569806726 Manufacturer No: 80672
DVD Reviews of A Clockwork Orange (Two-Disc Special Edition)
DVD Review: "What is the meaning of this ?!"
Summary: 2 Stars
Note that this review is based upon an old video tape version, not a recent DVD version
I haven't read it, but from what I've garnered from reviews of the Burgess book, the "point" to this story is that a "liberal" government, if taken to an extreme, would result in a "dehumanized society." I, for one, can forgive Burgess this obvious error. For example, if you compare the USA to Western Europe, you find that there is plenty of violent crime in the most "conservative" regions, yet very little in Western Europe. Moreover, you don't find much creativity or "freethinking" in the areas that voted for McCain by a wide margin (in the 2008 Presidential election). However, many have said that the more "liberal" areas of the USA are quite similar to Western Europe, especially "right-wing" pundits who like to do things such as to call for a boycott on French imports. Burgess seems to think that there will be small pockets of more "traditional" living, which Alex can choose if he wishes, by including passages about one of Alex's fellow gang members who "settles down" (which is omitted in the film).
One major problem here is that the psychological reality of such situations is highly unrealistic. That is, after committing such horrendous acts, how many people are going to settle down and live a "Leave it to Beaver" kind of life, with little excitement and many responsibilities? I'd like to have been given some insight into the workings and genesis of Alex's psychopathic mind. Is it because of the "liberal" government? If so, that is simply ludicrous. Again, look at recent history. Was the Columbine massacre located in some "super liberal" community of old, wasted hippies? Because I didn't read the book, I can't say how Burgess tried to resolve such obvious problems, if he even tried (perhaps he just meant it as more in jest than something to be taken too seriously by the reader), but the focus here is on the movie, so I'll move on to it now.
Kubrick takes a clearly unrealistic vision (at least at this point in history) and turns it into utter nonsense. There are no sympathetic characters, and there is little if any exposition on why the people in the film behave as they do. If they have been "dehumanized" by a "liberal" (or any other kind of) government, we need to see how it occurs or occurred. I don't really care all that much about what happens to "little Alex." To be honest, if he had been taken to a judge and summarily executed after being caught "red handed," I wouldn't have minded! I don't have a problem with the "background" of a criminal being taken into account in criminal courts (if it is reasonable, of course), but all we see here is a psychopathic personality who needs to be stopped. If this film is meant to make viewers consider the "glamorization of violence," it succeeds in doing the opposite (and how much of such glamorization was there circa 1970, when what was on the minds of most Americans was Vietnam and "race riots")?
Kubrick shows us more than one of these youth gangs, but we don't get a sense of what the overall society is like. There is what appears to be a public housing project that contains the small but nice apartment that Alex and his family reside in (the decor might nauseate you, but it is consistent in several different living areas, making it appear that this was the style of the times (which was also the style circa 1970 among many young people), so it's unclear what is meant by the decor, though the prison was "old fashioned," which is problematic, though minor when compared to several other ones. The lobby of the housing project is a shambles, as are other areas of some of the urban area we are shown, but again viewers are given no clues about why this is the case. There are two houses that are very nice, both on the inside and outside, but again, we can't discern why from the film. If there are extreme socio-economic (or at least economic) differences among people in this future society, then how "liberal" can that be considered?
And how "liberal" is it to allow teenage gang member to drink concoctions that make them "ultra violent?" That is just stupid, and this seems to be more of a "libertarian" idea than a "liberal" one (and for those who don't know, most "libertarians" in the USA these days seem to align themselves with the Republican party, and not the Democrats). But again, this is a minor problem, but part of the major issue about furnishing the viewer with some sense about why this future society is the way it is presented in the very limited glimpses we get of it, as we follow the "highlights" of Alex's life at a certain period in time.
Basically, Kubrick is guilty of very poor "storytelling" here, and that is something no maker of a fictional piece of entertainment can be forgiven (in my opinion, of course). If he wanted to change the point of Burgess' book, that's fine, but then you have to do a lot more work. If he was interested in warning us about what a few powerful people can do to society in general, in terms of "social engineering" or something else, then the better subject might have been Alex's parents, because most people do not become anywhere near as brutal and devoid of humanity as Alex under the worst of social conditions. How about the young people who were victimized by people like Alex? We don't see them at all, unless you count the young woman who was about to be raped by the rival gang, and who ran off the stage without the viewer learning anything about her. Was this common? Was it mostly something those of the lowest socio-economic strata had to fear? We are not even given the slightest of clues!
One thing I did find interesting was how many scenes were set up to have a stage-like quality, or were actual stages. It seemed like Kubrick wanted us to think that "all the world's a stage," and yet I can't imagine how this fits in with Burgess' book or the general idea of youth, bored by some sort of a "nanny state" (as some "right wing" pundits say here in the USA), will be lead to either a mindless or psychopathic lifestyle. Moreover, the viewer does learn that there is some sort of "opposition politics" in the society, and so again there is an obvious problem, which is that in such societies, there is rarely a great deal of movement to one extreme or the other.
That leaves the reader to question how things got so "out of hand" if the people could have voted for a different vision of society once they saw that one party's governance was not what they desired. Here, I think Kubrick needed to change things, with "liberals" taking over and there being no opposition party. At least in 1970, "conservatives" might have agreed with this, though they would still have condemned the sexual violence in the film, which "liberals" would have been (and I'm guessing were) more willing to tolerate. If he did show us a society run as a "liberal nanny state," then the "old fashioned" prison system we witnessed would have to have been very different. Again, this may have meant some major changes to the book, and I don't know how creative Kubrick was in this area, considering how his movies were not written by him, but were adaptations of books.
I think the most generous way to look at this film is to view it as a kind of fable. It's something along the lines of "Little Red Riding Hood," really. However, that story added a magical realist element, as some might say today, whereas this film used sound and imagery to "dazzle" use with would make most of us want to vomit if we saw it they way it actually occurs. Furthermore, there certainly seemed to be an argument here for a "conservative agenda." That is, the notion that people are inherently "bad," and that the few who have (for some reason) "moral fortitude" need to do all in their power to keep the greedy, lustful, lazy, potentially violent, and/or morally bankrupt "masses" from getting what they want (or think they want). And all of this we are supposed to just accept, without being given any reasonable explanation for it.
Sorry, I'm not "buying" any of it. And what's more, I haven't even been given any reason to do so, not even a bad reason! I might be able to get a few minor chuckles from a book that imagines a society where "liberalism" runs amok, though I might not believe that it could ever actually occur, but Kubrick's vision is as unappealing as one can imagine, as well as being unrealistic (or does "liberalism" not include a democratic political system, where people can vote for change if they don't like current policies?). When I was in my twenties, I really liked this film. My thought was that this was a vision of what could happen in society if the "glorification of violence" was "taken too far." Now, twenty or so years later, I don't think that this view makes sense, in terms Kubrick's intentions. Nor do I think it makes sense in terms of what has happened since then (for example, many nations enjoy violent Hollywood movies yet there isn't much violent crime). I think that I now have a "reality check" that films need to pass if I am to take them seriously, unless (as perhaps Burgess' intent was in the novel) it's not meant to be taken seriously. Kubrick, leaving all the "glamorization" aside, seems to have been deadly serious, though about what, exactly, is unclear.
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