Live Life Team
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, and Michael Bates
In a sadistic future, civilization is on the edge of disintegration. A radical new practice, designed to rehabilitate criminals in the minimum time possible, is trialled on a convicted killer and gang leader Alex (McDowell) with mixed results, as upon his release he is brutally beaten by all his old enemies and unable to defend himself.
Stanley Kubrick never made a film that didn’t attract debate, but A Clockwork Orange caused more than a bit of a fuss. Blamed by the media for almost every crime of the day, the film was ultimately removed from cinemas in the UK at the demand of the director, after he received multiple death threats. The film was never prohibited as the urban myth suggests.
Allegations that the film glamorises violence are absurd, though the attire and dialogue of the central character may have been copied by a few violent criminals of the time. Such condemnation hasn’t affected the film’s true intention and influence. Novelist Anthony Burgess’ forewarning of a nightmare future in which criminal gangs and violent thugs roam freely, with little fear of prosecution, has proved more visionary than he could have envisaged (the violence in the film doesn’t now seem that excessive by modern standards). The film’s main social observations ring true just as well today as they did when it was first released.
Smart, shocking, influential, fierce, there are few descriptions that don’t fit A Clockwork Orange’s unique style.
