This is arguably the most iconic sequence in the whole movie. The result is a film that almost dares the audience to laugh at the grotesque images on display.
When Alex is introduced as a shameless, sadistic criminal in the opening act of the film, it seems impossible that the movie will be able to make the audience sympathize with him. The movie never expects the audience to forgive Alex or root for him, but his character arc takes a tragic turn following his arrest. While Dr. Strangelove ends pretty definitively with the destruction of all life on Earth by nuclear fallout, The Shining ends with a scary moment involving a mysterious photo, and A Space Odyssey concludes with the next stage of human evolution.
Similarly, A Clockwork Orange ends on an ambiguous note. Is it okay to use aversion therapy to prevent criminal behavior? The complex moral questions asked and explored by A Clockwork Orange still plague armchair philosophers to this day.
What follows is an odyssey where a reformed Alex endures the same pain he inflicted on others before arriving at a place you may not quite expect the story to end. Clockwork Orange exists not to champion Alex as a protagonist but to allow us perverse catharsis as we take on the perspective of a dysfunctional teenager. The painterly composition, Looney Tunes -esque sound effects, and juxtaposed classical music that score the most abhorring violence exist to show how and what Alex views his actions to be: playful.
Unlike how attractive modern icons like Tony Stark, Walter White, or Hannibal Lecter are, Alex is a cultured, intelligent, and eloquently-spoken individual who commands attention. He loves art, particularly Beethoven, and his affections for his pet snake — a metaphor of his endless lust — proves he is willing to care for a living thing.
We are naturally susceptible to people like Alex, and Alex is an extreme example. His own spoken words are a unique slang called Nadsat, a hybrid of English, Russian, German, and Cockney. Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess was a passionate linguist who invented Nadsat to give Orange a timeless quality and reinforce Alex as a personality separate from the world around him.
However, there was a time when we almost got a totally different version of the story. Mick Jagger would have played Alex, and his bandmates would have played his friends, a. The costume design in A Clockwork Orange , specifically for Alex and his Droogs, is iconic and instantly recognizable to any cinephile — but what makes the legacy of the look all the more impressive is the fact that it came together is a super haphazard way.
Stanley Kubrick had McDowell throw the costume together and loved it. A Clockwork Orange famously wastes no time at all delving into its darkest content, with the first act of the movie being a rather harrowing experience, and the madness all kicks off with Alex and his Droogs assaulting a drunk homeless man played by Paul Farrell. The original first act of violence featured in the movie was supposed to be a sequence where the gang accosted a man going home from the library with a bunch of priceless books in his possession.
The actor who played the victim ended up not being available to shoot the sequence in the third act of the film where he got retribution on a post-Ludovico Treatment Alex, so the production was forced to pivot and come up with something new.
Kubrick loved the approach so much that he and McDowell immediately left set so that Kubrick could go home and acquire the rights to the song. During production, the star legitimately got his eyes anesthetized before clamps were inserted to keep his eyelids open, and he was unable to move due to being in a straight-jacket.
The doctor featured in the scene applying solution to his eyes is a real doctor, and was working with the understanding that drops had to be applied every 15 seconds or there was a risk that McDowell could have gone blind. While in the car, the anesthetic that was used on his eyes wore off, and after driving over a pothole McDowell got a sensation that he says felt like a razor slicing through his entire body.
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