82. A Clockwork Orange; movie review
Cert 18
131 mins
Baca Juga
I reckon A Clockwork Orange is one of the films I had to see if I ever wish to aspire to credibility as a reviewer.
So, as luck would have it, the British Film Institute is screening it from the spring as part of a Stanley Kubrick season.
Thus, I took the advantage of a flight to our winter sojourn to Gran Canaria to watch it on iTunes.
This wasn't the wisest choice because the plane was packed with parents and children. So, I had to keep my finger poised on the fast-forward button whenever any nudity appeared on the screen.
Little did I realise how much it would be called into action. There are so many boobs and bums, I used it more than if I had been playing Subbuteo.
The first half of A Clockwork Orange is typical off-the wall Kubrick and I wondered where on earth it was going.
Malcolm McDowell stars as a psychopath who hangs around with a gang (including a young Warren Clarke), meting out ultra-violence against the innocent.
McDowell's Alex also narrates the movie, giving his audience the lowdown on why he is bent towards such extreme actions.
To add to the strangeness, Kubrick adopts the Nadsat language which is used by the teen gangsters in Anthony Burgess's novel.
Apparently, Burgess was a linguist and depicted his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English (it seemed like a version of Cockney to me).
Anyway, all fell into place after Alex is sent to jail for his crimes and then tries to ingratiate himself with the authorities as a method of gaining early release.
Inevitably, because it is a Kubrick movie, there are great swathes of A Clockwork Orange which are almost impossible to penetrate.
And, even though it is meant to be a comedy, I didn't laugh.
But sticking with it paid off because I found its second half strangely intoxicating.
Reasons to watch: A Kubrick classic
Reasons to avoid: Very very weird
Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity:Yes
Overall rating: 7/10
Did you know? Kubrick didn't like the book upon first reading because of the Nadsat language Burgess created for the novel. The language, comprised of Russian and Cockney rhyming slang, confused the eventual director until he revisited the source material after his efforts to make a biopic about Napoleon fell through.
The final word. Malcolm McDowell: "When we opened film, the audiences tended to sit in their seats at the end in a sort of stunned silence. Now, audiences just laugh all the way through. It is fairly black but it is a comedy nevertheless and when nobody laughed, I presumed that they hated the movie, but of course, it was just that they were so stunned by the whole experience of it."
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