Artist A Clockwork Orange

Locked in a tight race with Eyes Wide Shut, 1971’s A Clockwork Orange stands as the most simultaneously loved and loathed movie in Stanley Kubrick’s filmography. The film explores the beauty of brutality through the eyes of a young London thug (Malcolm McDowell) who loves Beethoven and beating up people. When the state intervenes and “corrects” McDowell’s condition, Kubrick (and Anthony Burgess, who wrote the book Kubrick adapted) implies that the new McDowell is even less human as a good citizen than he was as a criminal. The film’s disturbing message is highlighted by Kubrick’s unblinking aestheticization of violence: Many of the movie’s detractors have described his style as stacked-deck, fascist filmmaking, while others find it bold and brilliant.

Updated 08/09/2009