Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is gripping and worth the discomfort, with Malcolm McDowell making Alex appallingly good company. But it gives too little attention to the people he hurts, especially in its treatment of sexual violence.
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange asks us to consider the freedom of a young man who uses his freedom to hurt people. It is a gripping, often repellent film, and we think it worth seeing despite a serious failure to give those people their due. Adapting Anthony Burgess’s novel, Kubrick makes Alex’s appeal essential to the problem. The question is how far we will let a charismatic performance take us. Malcolm McDowell takes us an uncomfortable distance.
McDowell plays Alex with such pleasure in his own behaviour that the usual signs of screen villainy become unnecessary. We are watching someone enjoy himself, and the ease of the performance keeps drawing our attention back to him. We were sickened by the sexual violence, especially by the delight accompanying it. McDowell’s charm remains active even there, which makes the performance frightening and gives Kubrick a responsibility the film does not always meet.
John Alcott’s cinematography makes the violence appallingly watchable. His ordered compositions give us time to inspect what is happening, and there is no reassuring visual mess to suggest that the film itself has lost control. We notice the care given to the framing even when the behaviour inside it is repulsive. Kubrick leaves us conscious of how carefully our attention has been directed.
John Barry’s production design makes the surroundings feel as wilfully exaggerated as Alex himself. The places demand attention as insistently as the central performance, and that can be exhausting. It suits Kubrick’s picture of a society in which brutality and sophisticated behaviour are entirely compatible. But it also makes the people around Alex seem like further exhibits, with too little ordinary life to interrupt his hold on the film.
Wendy Carlos’s music helps make the close fit between sound and image unsettling. The musical timing gives the brutality a precision that makes it hard to watch without also noticing the skill involved. Alex’s enthusiasm for Beethoven matters here: enjoying music does nothing to restrain his cruelty. Kubrick does not invite us to mistake that enthusiasm for kindness, though the pleasure he takes in presenting Alex makes the distinction less clear than it ought to be.
Bill Butler’s editing keeps the pace measured enough for repulsion to become fascination. At 137 minutes, the film also gives us time to grow familiar with its provocations. We begin to recognise the repeated invitation to enjoy Alex and then examine that enjoyment, and the repetition weakens the effect. Some passages could be shorter without losing the difficulty of what Kubrick is asking us to consider.
The film meets a useful test for science fiction: its questions stay awkward once its strange society has become familiar. What should a society be allowed to do to prevent someone choosing badly? Kubrick chooses someone whose freedom we have little instinct to defend. McDowell keeps that question alive even when Alex’s behaviour seems to have settled it. Yet the people he hurts receive too little of the attention lavished on him.
Calling the film deliberately disturbing does not settle that objection. Kubrick has made the aggressor fascinating, and the imbalance deserves scrutiny even from those of us persuaded by the defence of free will. There is plenty here for company willing to disagree afterwards. Do not choose it for a relaxed evening, and take the sexual violence seriously before pressing play.
