Stanley Strangelove Comment

Obviously the author doesn’t like the very visual version of “A Clockwork Orange”, made by Stanley Kubrick. Many time he accuses Kubrick of being pornographic and of showing a lack of professional techniques such as the very loud sound and the none nice images. In his opinion Kubrick is an artist but in this movie he developed as an amateur because there is nothing artistic in this work. The main character is criticized many times of showing too much violence, sexual images and pornographic content. The guilty for all these is Kubrick himself, for following Anthony Burgess novel as a script, which may seen as rude and non-original. At some moment the music is cheered, but it is also criticized because Kubrick couldn’t obtain the effect he wanted with the music in his audience. The author thinks that the movie is sold for young people, when it should be only fir limited audience who understands the twisted interpretation of “a clockwork orange”.

Speaking for me, I totally disagree with the author of this article. I don’t think that Kubrick wanted to make a porn movie, he just wanted to transmit his message very clearly; so combined “rough” sexual and exhibitionist images with the harmony of classic music, just to make it softer but give it some rhythm at the same time. Alex’s description by Kubrick, I think, is well achieved because he transmits that the young people can make a change, so he shows both sides of the coin (good and bad) using explicit content. In my opinion this movie is well made and behind every mistake that Pauline Kael may find there is a symbolism. For example, the reason of the loud sounds is that the director wanted to be heard, and the reason of the excessive violence is that Kubrick just wanted to be clear, specific and not beating about the bush.