Malcolm McDowell does a good job as the main character, especially the particular look of his smile makes him look quite deviant, kind of like the Joker. Everyone else is more or less forgettable, although the Hitler-looking prison warden did a decent job. The score was quite good. The film somewhat held my attention but not fully; the best parts were the early criminal scenes and the scenes with McDowell being brainwashed.

I would give it...I don't know, I guess a 5.5/10.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183101)

he overcomes the predictive programming (is that the socialism, the destruction of free will?) by the political opposition torturing him into trying to kill himself (is that good or bad? it seemed like they wanted him to try to kill himself even before the wheelchair guy realized mcdowell killed his wife) and at the end he goes back to a life of crime and goes on the government dole for helping a corrupt government stay in power (is that the socialism?)

the message is really muddled

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183105)

ebert thought it had no message as well: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-clockwork-orange-1972

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183109)

"all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex"

per the catholic note below, the book makes it much more clear that the possibility of redemption is motivating the overall message. but in the film they nailed the deviant look so exactly and didn't give the viewer any inkling that the character is someone who can possibly be expected to achieve redemption. as a result, it's a flawed film despite technical mastery

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183518)

I like Pauline Kael, too, but she's sometimes just a bit too arch or misses the point.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183554)

Author was very Catholic, and the fact that he was an atheist for most of his life (maybe all? I forget) doesn’t really get in the way of his enunciation of the Catholic ethos of the need for free will and the dignity of the human person, even when it throws up hard problems like the evil of Alex.

The movie gets some of this across but there the point seems more to be that the Ludovico Technique and associated apparatus is evil because it’s the same sort of reveling in cruelty that Alex does, except under the aegis of the state and morality. The movie just gives you the sort of grim choice between cruelty dispersed to the level of the individual and then meted out upon society at large (droog violence) or concentrated at the level of the collective and meted out upon individuals (Ludovico etc).

The book doesn’t escape this problem but leans into the idea that ultimately the latter is more evil because it takes away the ability of the individual to make a moral change (I know they do say this pretty explicitly in the movie but the book is more didactic on this point). This is why it’s impermissible to rewire Alex—it denies the possibility of his own salvation. Much of Catholic opposition to the death penalty comes from the same place.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183275)

the book the fictional author is writing at the time is called clockwork orange fwiw

also fwiw btw Burgess was known to be a pathological liar so who knows how many of these details are actually true

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183484)

a genuinely unique and creative attempt to show youth slang and how its simultaneously (1) internally coherent and comprehensible and (2) total nonsense to adults

using russian style words was brilliant and prevents (imo) it from sounding dated. imagine if the characters in the book were saying things like "say, mac daddy, that's a foxy chick" - which would more accurately reflect the actual slang of the time

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183507)

if the protagonist was a nigger instead of white, everyone here would be talking about what the (unintended) "message" of the movie really is: that some people are evil psychopaths, they can't be "redeemed" or changed, and you just have to eliminate them because they're intrinsically evil and will always harm other people and society

it really goes to show you just how naive/clueless/retarded/wrong/useless christian moralization really is. imagine thinking that whether or not a murderous, violent psychopath has "free will" is meaningful, relevant, interesting, or "morally significant." imagine thinking that spending any time or effort trying to "rehabilitate" intrinsically evil people makes any sense whatsoever or will lead to a better world in the aggregate

there's also something revolting and pathetic going on with the dynamic of The Weak and The Oversocialized and The Christian instinctively being drawn to and being fascinated by evil for the sake of evil. AJIP's comment about about how the author was a victim of similar violent crimes as in the book/movie doesn't surprise me. reminds me of a comment i made yesterday about how people who like "horror" movies are fundamentally psychologically defective in this same way. the legacy of christianity and the softness of the modern world and its disconnection from the state of nature has created this bizarre creature who instinctively worships evil because it is The Thing Beyond Their Understanding, and its instincts to "rehabilitate" it rather than to punish it or stamp it out are just a reflection of their reverence for it, rather than any kind of deeper moral understanding or questioning

this same dysfunctional, defective psychological structure is behind every white lib, too. and individuals like this are no more redeemable than intrinsically evil psychopaths themselves: they're just broken. there's a similar condemnation of women as a group, and of the recent enfranchisement of women in history, but i'm not even going to bother going there

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183615)

MPA your response?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183620)

But you'd have to distinguish that from the fact that millions of people enjoy scary movies for the same reason they enjoy roller coaster rides--the pleasure of tension and release. It's not much different from comedy, that way (good horror and good comedy both rely on elements of things like anticipation and mounting discomfort/uncertainty leading to a moment of release, often with an accompanying physical response).

I think what the poaster is more worried about is the reveling in the gruesome and the evil, and maybe there is something fundamentally broken there, especially if you turn into some sort of limit-experience junkie like Peter Sotos (fascinating, great in small doses, but who would actually want to be him? my word!).

Even if it is a psychological defect, I genuinely do not think it's a socially harmful one--at worst it (like most obsessions) might lead you to isolate yourself in your nerd cave with your fake snuff movies and so on, but that's about it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183820)

if you showed our ancestors from even 100 years ago present-day horror movies, or our current political, sociological, and religious reverence for the criminal and the psychopathic, they would recoil in disgust and think that we as a society and a people have become demonically possessed. it is so self-evidently unnatural, unhealthy, anti-social, evil, really, it's just so ridiculously over the top that it's silly to even try to describe it with words

the attraction to and worship of fear and victimization and evil for the sake of evil is an extremely recent phenomenon in our history, and is only enabled by the perversions of modernity acting upon the christianity-selected genetic legacy of europeans. fear and suffering are things to be overcome, to be conquered, to be eliminated. every healthy man throughout human history has instinctively felt and known this. there is nothing noble or beautiful or healthy about fear or suffering or the empty and meaningless infliction of harm on others. but we've ended up in a situation where a very significant % of the population have come to worship and revere these things because these people are now so disconnected from the natural world that these sentiments and phenomena take on mystical, awe-inspiring qualities

the scene of an overweight, low-T, hormonally deficient eloi freak sitting in its living room voyeuristically watching graphic sadistic violence on a screen and cheering it on as inspiring and beautiful while paying homage in its daily life to subhuman psychopathic criminals and foreign invaders animalistically preying upon high-trust civilized society is one that inspires a deep revulsion and disgust and contempt in me. enough: there cannot be any tolerance or mercy whatsoever for this, in the same way that there cannot be any tolerance or mercy whatsoever for the intrinsically evil psychopath worshiped by this kind

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183920)

nice question begging bro, but don't make *too* many marks in the margins of that Introduction to Nietzsche if you want to sell it back to the campus bookstore at the end of the semester.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48183829)

has to be the unaltered ending UK version not the shitty one for USA and film completely different

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5609479&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310893",#48184608)