What's it gonna be then, eh?
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick (Screenplay)
Anthony Burgess (Novel)
I'm not gonna pretend I don't find problems with this, it's genuinely one of my absolute favourite books and the biggest problem with the film adaptation, faithful as it is, is missing one key element. The ending. The book has an incredible ending where Alex grows up, realises his rebellious days are over and wants to move on. Leaving the reader to wonder, had Alex not gone through the torturous experiments, would he have come to this conclusion or would he just continue to be the humble narrator we had come to love? Maybe it didn't leave everyone feeling that way but that's what I got, then again, I tend to have multiple existential crises where I wonder how life would have gone if I'd taken Spanish instead of Drama at school or whether I even read books at all after I put books down in year 7. That's the sort of stuff that keeps me up at night...that and a need for those mozzarella sticks from Mcdonalds when in reality all I have is Golden Nuggets and Actimel, which y'know, isn't a bad thing because those Golden Nuggets are the best but...they're not going to hit the spot when you want those mozzarella sticks. I'm not sponsored by any food company by the way...I'm just always hungry and talk about food.
Moving away from food and into the Korova Milk Bar...I don't care if that was a bad lead-in to the next paragraph we're rolling with it, the film has very few nitpicks. While I was doing my notes I was kinda just looking at the film itself and tried not to compare it to the book, which I managed to do...mostly, towards the end, I started making comparisons and maybe in the future I'll talk about book to film adaptation, and maybe use this as an example along with the 50 Shades books, don't really want to buy them and I don't want to go to the library to borrow a copy but I'll work something out. I keep deviating from my point, regardless of this being an adaptation of one of my favourite books, I managed to keep my notes clear of "that didn't happen in the book" and managed to nitpick myself some points in the film that were just a bit off. Such as when Mr Deltiod (Aubrey Morris) drank that glass of water with the dentures in it...First of all, gross. Second, whose dentures were they? Alex's (Malcolm Mcdowell) parents had already gone out to work and I assume they would have taken their teeth with them, considering they had a fairly normal-sounding conversation so...were they just spare teeth just hanging out in the bedroom or? Third, why was Deltoid chilling in Alex's parent's room? Was the kitchen or living area not good enough? Did he want a more comfortable place to grab Alex inappropriately? Fourth, was there any real need to grab him inappropriately? I feel like he could have gotten the point across just as well without the vicious ball grabbing. I get that Malcolm is a gorgeous and talented human being but...no need to get touchy feely when your character is probably somewhere in the 30-50 age range the character you're grabbing is 15. Yeah, little Alex is 15. You forget that when the story is that damn good and the actor looks nothing like a 15-year-old.
Another nitpick would be the fact that...regardless of being in a gang, when one of your members rapes a woman, why watch? This has kind of always bothered me, considering these kids are 15 for a start and have had this much sexual experience but then...going by this one scene where Alex and his droogs break into The Writers (Patrick Magee) home, beats him and rapes his wife, forcing The Writer to watch the obscene act. Now, if this was me, I'd probably feel uncomfortable watching the rape itself and would much rather watch the suffering of the man being forced to watch his wife be violated, I'd rather make sure he didn't look away longer than the time it would take to blink in case he missed out on the ultraviolent act in front of him. Knowing that someone is stood over you and watching you is a lot more intimidating also. I guess that's a sadistic way of going about it I guess but if you're gonna torture someone, do it right...With that attitude, I could get into politics...or the NHS.
Speaking of the writer, ever noticed he replaced his wife's reading pod for Darth Vaders gym equipment. I'm not even joking, the guy who plays Julian, David Prowse, was the body of Darth Vader. How cool is that? But yeah, dick move, why can't Julian have his gym stuff in his bedroom and keep the pod? What's that? It's there to mirror the shot from earlier and to show change? It was a cool shot and a subtle thing to do but to me, it came off as a replacement for his wife, therefore, The Writer can suck one.
Now then, there are way too many positives to talk about in this so I won't go in detail through them all. I'll probably come off my caffeine high and you'll get bored reading this and neither of us want either of those things to happen so here we go. The basic way the film is opened with block colours and basic fonts, gorgeous to offset the mental adventure you're going to be taken on, Basil the snake, not in the book but I love him, he's adorable and it hurts when you find out what's happened to him when Alex finally returns home. The way that the film is almost line for line of the book, I know I said I wasn't going to compare it to the book but for this point it's appropriate. Malcolm McDowell plays Alex exactly as I imagined him to be in the book. I don't know whether that's because I'd only ever seen short clips of the film before and that impacted the way I saw the character but I always imagined Alex to be pretty rough with the accent but smart enough to know what he's on about. Of course, every single shot in this is distinctly Kubrick and absolutely gorgeous to go with it. It's a shame he's no longer with us as I would have loved to pick his brain one day about his process when directing but, that's a dream that I'll never realise. Finally, I love that there is full frontal nudity in this and yet, no genitals are shown. Yeah, ever noticed that? Women and McDowell are stripped right down to their birthday suit and yet nothing flappy or floppy is ever exposed. I don't know whether that was because of the fact that the film would have gotten a harsher rating, whether it was an aesthetic costume/prop design choice or if it was just how pubic fashion was back then but it really amazed me.
I really do love this film, if you've not seen it yet go look at it, if you've not read the book yet, I advise you check it out too. One is a great story about how imposing the rules and conditions that are better suited to a machine onto an organic creature is...for lack of a better way to say it, a shitty idea, and the other is a great story about a pretty ineffective government. Though I'll warn you now if you've not read the book and want to, you may want to get a copy that has a Nadsat to English or whichever language you speak, it's a trying language to get your head around if you don't have the will to just guess what the words mean from context. I did that and got most of it wrong so the second time reading it I used the glossary. Reading experience got a hell of a lot better from that.
And so with that, I Jess, your humble...reviewer, will leave you to go do whatever the hell you want to do after reading this and I hope you have a good day.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support its creators by buying the book, DVD or Bluray.
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