Week 24 – A Clockwork Orange (1971)

• A Clockwork Orange
• Released: 12/19/1971
• Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Mariam Karlin, Michael Bates
• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• IMDB Page

Hello! Welcome to Week 24 here at 52 Films, 52 Portraits! This week’s film was quite a different experience than most of the films so far. The subject of this week’s blog is my uncle, Mark. Mark is one of my dad’s older siblings and grew up with his family in Alabama. He now lives with his wife, Sally, and a couple of his sons in Grove City, PA, where he works as an Professor of Engineering. We will be getting more acquainted with all of them in future installments.

When I first reached out to Mark to ask him to participate in this project, I have to admit that I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew that when I was growing up, Mark and his family didn’t spend much time watching movies or television, and that he had never shown much interest in films around me, but I was also optimistic that he would participate. His seeming lack of interest in film made it even more interesting to talk to him about the project, because I really felt like I could get a whole new perspective on him through it. And he did not disappoint.

My grandmother (see Week 20) and Mark at Christmas a couple of years ago.

Mark was one of the people who seemed to have the most difficulty choosing a film for this project. Interestingly, it wasn’t because he couldn’t think of a film. It was because he could think of two favorite films for vastly different reasons, and couldn’t decide which to go with. Even after he chose, he considered swapping multiple times. But we’ll come back to those choices soon.

As I expected, when I asked Mark how big of a film fan he considered himself to be, he said that he would not consider himself to be a big fan at all, adding that he generally sees only a few films each year. He did tell me, however, that he had some fond memories of films that he watched growing up. Some of his earliest memories of film include seeing The Sound of Music (and falling in love with Julie Andrews/Maria when he was only about 5 years old) and Mary Poppins.

Mark also told me that he finds that he enjoys different types of films depending on the mood that he is in. If he is looking to really get involved in a film, he enjoys movies that “stimulate the intellect.” However, if he is just looking to relax, he prefers mindless films such as adventure movies that provide a good distraction. He said that his favorite actors include Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne and Denzel Washington. And his favorite director is probably Stanley Kubrick.

As I mentioned earlier, Mark had two choices in mind when I asked to to participate in this project. The first was Disney’s animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which he called “incredible” and “groundbreaking.” He did admit that by today’s standards, it could probably be considered a good bit chauvinistic, but that doesn’t diminish it’s impact on the film industry, especially animation, and it remains a great film to this day. The other film on Mark’s list – and the one he ultimately chose – couldn’t be further away from Snow White in many ways. That film is A Clockwork Orange. Mark said that he chose this film because it makes the viewer really think, and has something to say about the world. He also pointed out that the dystopian future depicted in the film shares some “unnerving parallels” with our world today. It is equal parts frightening and fascinating.

Mark said that the first time he remembers watching A Clockwork Orange was during binge week in the 1980s when he watched as many Stanley Kubrick films as possible, which also included 2001: A Space Odyssey, another film which he said really grabs your attention.

Before we ended, Mark added that one of the reasons that he tends to not watch all that many movies is that he often gets way too emotionally invested in them. He said that he has to be very careful about the films that he watches, or he won’t be able to sleep. As an example, he talked about how he had to walk out of the theater during Titanic, after seeing a woman’s body floating by onscreen.

Getting to the film, I have to admit that I was nervous going into this week’s viewing. I had never seen A Clockwork Orange and all I knew about it was basically what the tagline tells you: a boy whose chief interests include rape and violence. Generally, these themes are not my favorites. Still, I kept an open mind, and went into the film with as much optimism as I could.

In the end I came out of the film split. On the positive side, I definitely saw how much of an artistic vision Kubrick put into the film. And Malcolm McDowell’s performance was really impressive. But I also found the plot to be a little bit scattered and hard to follow at times. I was also correct in my fears that the film would be a little too dark for me at certain points. However, with the exception of a couple of scenes, I felt that the darkness was generally warranted and I agree with Mark that the film definitely had a message about the world we live in.

The whole argument of whether bad behavior should be ‘fixed’ through any means possible is an interesting one, and it really resonated in a lot of ways to the world today.

I also admit that I had to look up the meaning of the title of the film. If anyone else is interested, you can find a pretty succinct explanation here.

One thing that I thought was interesting was that, when the film was over, the only performance that I could really strongly remember was McDowell’s. That’s not a slam against the other cast members, it’s more just a commentary on how the story was told through his character’s eyes. To make this even more obvious, the film even begins and ends with close-ups on his face (minus the fantasy at the end). It sort of reflects how selfish and awful of a character he was that none of the people around him are presented as memorable or remarkable at all in his retelling of the events.

That’s it for this week! Have you seen A Clockwork Orange? What did you take from it? I really feel like it’s one of those films that has a lot of room for individual interpretation, so I’d love to hear other thoughts on it. Please leave a comment or follow below!

Thanks!

Next up: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly