RayRay:

I'm not sure I would agree with your premise re Clockwork Orange: "The absolute brutality is necessary..." I think Kubrick made a judgment that Burgess never did - that hooliganism equates non-conformity. Americans tend to valorize rebellion and the rebal as the embodiment of individualism and freedom. In Clockwork, McDowell and his boys victimize and brutalize people who obviously are comfortable and have means, and this takes Kubrick off the hook, the demonization of the haves by the have nots. What if they victimized the type of people you find in Mike Leigh's films, would we feel the same way?

Or to put it another way, the home invasion, murder and rape of the wife while the husband watch in John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is the most graphic and violent I've ever seen, and there I think it is germane and legitimate in a moral sense. It is an important film that looks at violence in an unflinching way, so much so that Scorseses agreed to produced his next film on the basis of seeing Henry. There is no class agenda here, and there is no "non-conformity" to wrap the violence in. There is a scene in Clockwork much like it, but the way it was limned made it dishonest.

Test your emotions, rent Henry, or the more recent French film Irreversible, sit thru the violence of a man clubbed to a pulp in a gay leather bar and a 9 mins take of Monica Belluci being rape, and tell me what you think. Both Henry and Irreversible are honest, but barely watchable for most people. Even most of the critics here said so.

member 27:

Every Kubrick film is canonical, going back even to Paths of Glory, and distinctive with his sensibility, which is not to say that they're all likable or successful. I thought that Full Metal Jacket was good, one of the best film to come out of the 'Nam period, you can't accuse it of hypocrisy like a lot of the others, or sentimentality. How much more honest can you be? I even like Eyes Wide Shut, but he should've released the European version here, put his money where his mouth is.

Lolita is not Nabokov, for that you have to see Lynne's remake, and it is better. Strangelove is great satire. 2001 is a great set-piece, like a LaMont Young composition, no more, no less, it uses the conventions and tropes of science fiction without itself being science fiction. Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, with it's HP Lovecraft nonsense, is more science fiction. Barry Lyndon can be a companion piece to it. Shining is overwrought and silly.

The Killing is a great heist noir, proving Kubrick can do it if he wants to.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mark f,

You created another thread for this instead of answering the the appropriate one, why?

It addresses the larger consideration of Kubrick and his work, not just 2001 and Clockwork Orange.

See below...

mark f wrote:

"wong828, much of this isn't too significant, but the guy's name is KUBRICK. I see that you have a vast knowledge of sci-fi literature which I don't; I never read Burgess' novel, but based on the film (which is what this thread is about), why exactly do you think that Alex is a have-not? True, he seems to live in a wasted building, but he has nice things, a nice car, etc. He also is supposed to be some teenager. The students I teach, who drive nice cars, I don't consider them have-nots even if they live in a so-called "lower-class neighborhood." Also I think you forgot that Alex and his little droogs kicked the shit out of the old drunk, a Mike Leigh-type character. Kubrick was making his film, long, long before any of these other more "honest" films that you're talking about "stole" some of the shock value. Besides, I'm under the impression that Kubrick was trying to make a social satire in an artistic and entertaining way. If you believe that it's more "honest" to show violence in a drab, "realistic" way, then maybe you're right. The fact that Kubrick can't help but light, shoot and score his films artistically should not be held against him (and I realize that you DO think he was a genius.)"

*********

I stand corrected on the spelling of his name. Some issues:

Are you suggesting that unless we live in Mexico City or Bogotá the distinction between the haves and the have-not wouldn’t be obvious? There are people who live in parts of London and the outskirts of Paris who would have no problem telling you which they are, black and white. In Chicago, too. Or Los Angeles. Students in their high schools, some have high-end Nikes and nice cars, yes, and they wear stylish hip outfits and you want to tell me they feel like they’re from Highland Park or Winnetka? And yes, there are children of the affluent who listen to hip hop, talk trash, dress down and will end up in Ivy League placement, and they know who they are too. So let’s skip the semantics…

In Burgess, the droogs are roving bands of disaffected youth who predate on whoever happens to be in their way - a much more democratic reading. His society appears to be advanced socialism, and from the way the state punished Alex later on, fairly totalitarian. Writ Orwell, writ Koestler. In the thematic of Clockwork, the marginalized and their violence was arguably the only expression of freedom in a total society. In Clockwork, even this was wiped clean in Alex. In Chapter 21, Alex was rehabilitated.

The American publisher thought that was a weak ending, and ditched the last chapter. Kubrick did likewise. Without the last chapter, Burgess commented, “A vindication of free will had become an exaltation of the urge to sin. I was worried. The British version of the book shows Alex growing up and putting violence by as a childish toy; Kubrick confessed that he did not know this version: an American, though settled in England, he had followed the only version that Americans were permitted to know. I cursed Eric Swenson of W.W. Norton."

For Burgess, Clockwork was a descriptive sociology of this totalitarian state from the point of view of Alex, one of its denizens, even down to a concocted language that was a patois of working class Brit vernacular and Russian syntax. Kubrick schematicized the thematic to a simple opposition of the outlaw against conventional society, a much more simple-minded reading, and the way he chose to film it, he equates hooliganism with freedom. Alex and his affects, rakish in his outfits and demeanor, possessed of hipness and street cred, were valorized; his victims were demonized, the couple particularly, portrayed as disdainful, self-satisfied, people you would love to hate. Kubrick wants you to identify with Alex; tacitly, Kubrick justifies Alex’s brutality with the brutality of the state when it punished him later on.

I don’t think this is moral reasoning. It is corrupt. It is corrupt in much the same way that De Sade is corrupt when he defends the practices in his novels. You said Kubrick was making “a social satire in an artistic and entertaining way.” Are Kubrick and De Sade artful? Sure, they bring their craft and vision to their work. Is it entertainment? You tell me.

When you were teaching Clockwork in high school, leaving aside for the moment your responsibility as a teacher to your students, some of whom “live in a so-called ‘lower-class neighborhoods,’” why not consider the source? Weren’t you interested?

More later...

(I dunno that I think Kubrick is a genius, an excellent and individual director, yes, but a genius, no. The young Wells, definitely, just on the basis of Citizen Kane, Magnificient Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight alone - the formal and stylistic risk, narrative stratey, what have you... I would put Tarkovsky there, and Godard. Each brought a new way of seeing to cinema. Maybe that's genius?

In some offhand relevance, I HAVE read the Anthony Burgess book and would like to suggest that you all do the same. Really its quite short and the only thing making the read somewhat difficult (until you get the hang of it) is the dialect, which is mostly made up. Example: There is no point, my brothers, in viddy a man be tolchocked in a pool of his own koshly for some pretty polly.

That was made up, but you get the idea. Anyways the dialect really brings it to life and can be quite funny at times. (a line in the book says something about buying some cancers, I refer to the index to find out that they are cigarettes.)

I guess in the book our main character Alex has been forced into his position. Its a dog eat dog world and he still poises some childish innocence, which keeps you on his side. The book holds different justifications for the violence than the movie does. In the end of the book you are able to accept much easier that Alex being rid of the brainwashing is a cure, instead of a horrific but funny ending. Encourage it for a good read.