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Stanley Kubrick: Clockwork Orange
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Instead, Kubrick turned to another controversial novel, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. A satiric 1971 essay on crime and punishment set in a violent future world, the film initially scored an "X" rating in the U.S. but proved surprisingly popular regardless, even netting several Oscar nominations. In Britain, A Clockwork Orange played theatrically for a year without incident, but was pulled after a number of copy-cat crimes which authorities blamed on the picture's influence, including a brutal gang-rape mirroring a scene in the film. Moving from the future to the past, in 1975 Kubrick adapted William Makepeace Thackery's 19th century novel Barry Lyndon, a lavish costume drama detailing the rise and fall of an Irish rogue (Ryan O'Neal) during the 1700s.
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Three years later in 1971, Kubrick hit paydirt once more, making a film which exceeded even his abnormal levels of manufacturing shock and outrage in the viewer. To this day, A Clockwork Orange, based on the Anthony Burgess novel, remains arguably the most disturbing film ever made. It is disturbing not merely because of the story, about a gang of nihilistic youths living in a violently destructive future, nor because the future it predicts appears closer to reality with each passing day. Rather, it is because Kubrick dared the viewer to participate in atrocity, to enjoy watching the torture and abuse by and of a charming but vicious youth named Alex. Even worse, Kubrick succeeded. The most chilling part of seeing Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell) and his pals viciously beat a man to the point of crippling him, then forcing him to watch them rape his wife (all while "Singin' In the Rain" is sung), is just how entertaining it is. A Clockwork Orange seems almost a response to the complaint of 2001's restraint: you want action, Kubrick seems to say, I'll GIVE you action.
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Shortly after 2001 was finished, Kubrick turned to a much bleaker and more vulgar vision of the 21st century in A Clockwork Orange, adapted from the dark novel of the same name by British novelist Anthony Burgess. The protagonist here is Alex (Malcolm McDowell), an adolescent man who along with his three "droogs" (cronies) spends nights at a bizarrely-decorated bar drinking mixes of milk and drugs. This prepares the four pals for their favorite nightly pastimes: "ultra-violence" and rape. The loathsome actions of the degenerate group are depicted in detail and glorified with cinematography, art design, and classical music selections.
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It is fascinating, when reflecting upon Kubrick, how many times he made a seminal film. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) accurately portrays the absurdity and the danger of the Cold War by using blistering black humor; A Clockwork Orange (1971) paints an anarchistic portrait of future London, complete with a despicable, though sympathetic, hero. These films have a strange purity, dissecting their subjects in detail, but refusing to directly comment on them. One film defines post World War II paranoia on the international political scene; the other, the paranoia of a sterile society that lacks stable traditions. Both still retain the power to shock viewers with their ambiguity and violence.
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The Clockwork Orange Murder is murder that led to the Stanley Kubrick withdrawing his film The Clockwork Orange from Britain during his lifetime. This copycat killing saw an elderly vagrant bludgeoned to death in a church graveyard - just like in the film. Part two is the Rhyl Mummy following a mummy discovery in a home. When Leslie Harvey decided to get his mum's house redecorated while she was in hospital, he hadn't bargained for discovering a twenty year old mummified body in the landing cupboard. The body was that of a former lodger of his mother's and it transpired that Mrs Harvey had been helping herself to the victims maintenance payments ever since.
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Kubrick's works have set standards for films and genres therein that continue to hold strongly today. Without A Clockwork Orange, you don't get films like Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction. The violence Kubrick portrays in A Clockwork Orange set a standard that these later films could only emulate.
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