A SYNCOPATED HORROR-SHOW: A Clockwork Orange remains viscerally disturbing, insightful, and ever more relevant as the decades pass.
Interesting review, but unlike the movie, it ends on a slightly flat note:
Burgess concluded with a chapter excised from the American version Kubrick first read, in which Alex encounters former members of his gang who’ve moved on from violence and integrated into society. He starts thinking about doing the same, has a vision of himself as an adult, and when he sees an infant son in his vision realizes he’s growing up. The Alex of the movie is already grown up and has no hint of an interest in having a son. He’s interested in power, in bossing around his gang, in rape and drugs and ultra-violence. His problem with prison isn’t that it’s unjust, it’s that he’s not on top.
This is a movie that’s grown more relevant in the age of Trump and Brexit. When I saw it in the 1980s, both book and movie felt vivid and contemporary, to the point I was surprised when I found out when they both were created. Some of that’s a function of the influence both works had on punk. Some is how accurate the movie’s future felt: a decaying, increasingly violent urban wasteland. Times change; crime rates have dropped spectacularly over the last 30 years or so, Russia hasn’t influenced slang, and people are now less afraid of the young growing up to be violent fascists than they are—for some foolish reason—afraid of the youth being violently anti-fascist. But human corruption and political cynicism remain unchanged.
Related: Theodore Dalrymple on Anthony Burgess’s original novel: A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece.