A Clockwork Orange

What's that stuff about the extra ending?

Spoiler :
the ending I remember has the hero being "cured" by the Prime Minister and getting all his violent urges back.


If the extra ending is different from the one I quoted, would it be possible to have it in spoilers? :)

I never read the book, watched the movie a couple of times, and it's fascinating to see that a movie about ultra-violence made in 1971 is now rather tame by today's standards.
 
Read the book, nice and violent...hah and ******ed "DROOGS!!" ahahaha I liked it. And the rape, can't forgot all the rape what with "Alexander the Large" and all.

And it was a good social commentary. So whats not to like?
 
Masquerouge said:
What's that stuff about the extra ending?
Click to expand...

The *true* ending had him doing his violent crimes all over again with a new set of droogs. But eventually he realizes how pointless and destructive it is when he sees one of his old droogs (Pete?) married and with a job. So Alex decides to grow up.
 
I've read the book a couple of times and it's excellent. You don't really need to consult any glossary to get by the language. Your brain can appropriate the bizarre surprisingly quickly. I was amazed to find that, half way through chapter one, none of the terms seemed strange anymore.

The book, when read in the context of Britain's social history of the 1970s and the following Thatcher era, seems surprisingly prophetic in illustrating heightened police powers and the disaffection of the working classes. It's also a damning indictment, and poignant illustration of, social alienation. The fact Alex's parents do not have time for him because of their work at the factory being just one element here. And, as Britain finds itself dealing with even more disaffected working class youths, the rise of gang membership and violence, an increase in drunken youths and related crime, plus the experimentation of the criminal justice system in response to all this, the book's relevance endures.

---

I've lost count of how many times I've seen the film. It's a corker. I am continually charmed by the excellence of the art direction in the film. It's highly original and well ahead of its time. Anyone notice the Ikea like designs throughout? The lighting approach is of interest too. When compared to say The Shining or Eyes Wide Shut or Barry Lyndon, we find that Clockwork Orange's lighting design is very sparse and blunt. It's well suited to the subject matter, but sticks out like a sore thumb in Kubrick's oeuvre.

What's also interesting about the film is the way it was marketed. As I understand it, Kubrick took this on himself, designing the publicity posters and trailer (which is highly original), as well as the whole strategy itself. This was quite unprecedented in studio marketing history, providing testimony to how much power Warner gave to him.

---

Question about the language:

I only came to appreciate the Slavic roots of the slang used in the book when I started picking up Serbo-Croat. Obviously though, Burgess was looking to Russian as his source. Does anyone know what his point was in using Russian? Was it a warning against Britain turning towards Soviet style totalitarianism? It seems a tempting conclusion to come to, if not for the fact that the authorities don't use such language. But I've never looked into whether or not this was Burgess' intention. Anyone know about this?
 
Great book and such an experience of a film.

The violence that some people have mentioned as being a bad thing I disagree with because it gives the film such chaos and dystopia, which is what Kubrick and Burgess wanted in the first place. The violence (or "ultraviolence" as Alex likes to say) is just one of the factors that anchors the chaosity.

Rambuchan said:
. Does anyone know what his point was in using Russian? Was it a warning against Britain turning towards Soviet style totalitarianism? It seems a tempting conclusion to come to, if not for the fact that the authorities don't use such language. But I've never looked into whether or not this was Burgess' intention. Anyone know about this?
Click to expand...

I do think it warns of a (perhaps dystopian) scenario of increasing communist Soviet influence in the region.
 
Love the nook. Love the film equally. Still use some of the slang and quotes unwittingly - when I was pre-teen sitting my nephew last month, I told him to get to spatcka (or however it is spelt?) when he way playing around.

-It's the Home Office Minister who 'cures' him, not the Prime Minister.

-Kubrick himself pulled the film when the police said that they feared for his safety. At the time he was living in an isolated home in the Hertfrodshire countryside (Home?) and they feared what happened to the writer & his wife would happen to Kuberick. It was only re-released after his death.

- I can't remember who said it, but this SF writer guy said two things that stick in my head 1) A good SF book/film often has one part of society over-exaggurated to make a point, like overpopulation in 'Soylant Green', cultural barbarism in 'Farenheit 451' or teenage violence in this one. 2) If you make 100 predictions in a book, at least one will be correct. An excellent example is the 'wall screen' flat TV's in Farenheit 451.

- I believe that Slavic languages were used because they would be very unfamiliar with a western audience. I don't think that it's a refrence to communism or anything, but I could be wrong.

- Burgess & Kuberick were both infulenced by media reports of what we would call now 'ASBO kids' - then it was called hoolganism. Despite what many people say, what teenagers do today is nothing new at all. There are medieval reports of students at Oxford & Cambridge getting drunk, visiting brothels, burgularies, poaching and fights with fists, swords and crossbows. There are reports of binge-drinking dating back to the 16th Century.
 
Never seen the movie, tried to read the book, but I couldn't get through the violence, because it was too much. Violent video games and movies(to an extent) are okay, but it was difficult for me to read about the violence
 
Sir Matzee said:
Pro:

The film is beautiful and it clearly explain the crysis of modern man
Click to expand...
Care to elaborate?

The film is good but not on my top ten list. It's hard to sympathize with the main character who is quite the worthless scoundrel. The soundtrack is definitely excellent though.

The book is more trouble than it's worth w/ it's vocabulary you must memorize. Takes about thrice as long to read as a normal book.
 
Masquerouge said:
What's that stuff about the extra ending?

Spoiler :
the ending I remember has the hero being "cured" by the Prime Minister and getting all his violent urges back.


If the extra ending is different from the one I quoted, would it be possible to have it in spoilers? :)

I never read the book, watched the movie a couple of times, and it's fascinating to see that a movie about ultra-violence made in 1971 is now rather tame by today's standards.
Click to expand...

the violence is tame, but the sex in it would probably make it an NC-17 by American standards today. Of course the rules in the UK regarding sex in movies has always been more lax.

I enjoyed the movie, but I think it was slow in the delivery. I also wasn't a big fan of the Shakespearian style language of the main character or the obsession with classical music.
 
Narz said:
Care to elaborate?

The film is good but not on my top ten list. It's hard to sympathize with the main character who is quite the worthless scoundrel. The soundtrack is definitely excellent though.

The book is more trouble than it's worth w/ it's vocabulary you must memorize. Takes about thrice as long to read as a normal book.
Click to expand...

You don't have to "memorise" the vocabulary at all. You can often deduce what the various pieces of vocabulary mean from the context. As for Alex, I do find it possible to feel sorry for him, albeit only when he is being beaten up and cannot do anything. Agreed, the soundtrack is stupendous, with the especially eerie "Ultraviolence Theme".
 
I preferred the book, and many tolchoks in the yarbles to those droogs who say otherwise.

The film was very literal (like 2001), but seen nowadays seems a bit comical (especially the speeded up rape scene - which shouldn't be a comedy interlude).

Kubrick's best film was Dr. Strangelove I think.
 
The movie realy crushed my thinking about "singing in the rain". Always when I hear it I imagine the guy kicking to writer :(
 
@ParadigmShifter: I thought the speeded up sequence was the one where Alex takes home two girls met at a record store...

@Rambuchan: had some British youth already started using Nazi imagery? Becose if they did, maybe Burgess was making a veiled statement on the phenomenon.
 
I literally just finished the movie 15 seconds ago based on this thread, I decided to watch it.

Um... what the hell was going on?

He was cured? What happened to the police officers? The third member of the original gang that did not become a police officer? What was the political message behind it all? How does it relate to today's society?
 
In the movie he is not cured, the movie actually has this completely different ending than either of the book endings. In the full length book he grows up and realizes he was an idiot and wants to settle down, in the original amerrican castrated version of the book he is never cured.
 
Saw the movie in film class in high school, it was pretty great.

The version I saw has him being cured at the end

Never read the book.
 
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