A Clockwork Orange
It escapes my mind why I have not written about this movie earlier. In fact, I am nearly perfectly sure that I have started writing comments, but right now, it is absolutely unfindable.
The truth is that „A Clockwork Orange“ is one of those movies that is constantly on my mind (same for „Full Metal Jacket“ by the way). Both of them are easily my favorite Kubrick movies, before 2001 even. Aside from that, what can I say? It’s been awhile since I saw „A Clockwork Orange“, and I know that my thoughts about it were extremely chaotic. So my best guess would be that I have found myself incapable of writing this blog posting to the point of having forgotten it.
It’s pretty obvious that I find this film real horrorshow. There was this specific magical moment that turned the movie from something shocking via something random into a masterpiece for me: It was when the main character was spit into the face and smiled. In that moment, I thought that this smile was the deepest and most beautiful smile I have ever seen. Its ambiguity between evil and rebellious braveness, arrr. Starting from that point, the movie made perfect sense to me, and it fascinated me throughout its course.
It is sad, yet explicable why the movie is so immensely popular even today, especially among those who interpret it as a violence fest. There is so much more to the movie, and I love it for its controversy. As for myself, while I used to hate the main character when I watched the first 15 minutes of the film for the first time, I have come to root for him, I wanted him to triumph over the rotten society he is in and I loved the „one man against everybody“ topic.
Perhaps one of the reasons why „A Clockwork Orange“ is at least as epic and memorable as Lord of the Rings is the language employed by the characters. While Nadsat is far from being as beautiful as Elvish, it is easily recognizable that Burgess is a linguist who knows what he’s doing. As a fictional language, Nadsat is quite elaborated and it works. Plus, it sounds pretty cool, although I don’t think I will ever refer to my friends as droogs, let alone learn the language, heh. (I have always wanted to learn Elvish though.)
I find it satisfying how the movie ended on a rather open note, and I am a big fan of the original end of the book. I too think that it is perfectly realistic how the main character would ‚just naturally‘ decide to stop with his malicious actions and to build up a family and a real life.