As a science fiction film focusing on the future of mankind, "A Clockwork Orange" does not have as many technological elements as "2001: A Space Odyssey", but it casts its perspective on human society and the social system itself, using a surrealist approach to show us It tells a grotesque, dark humor and ironic story. Because Kubrick exaggerated and truly showed the pleasure and enjoyment brought to Alex by the violent instinct, and accompanied by serious Beethoven or Brahms music, the high contrast between hearing and vision is easy to attract The confusion and confusion of the movie, therefore, this is also a controversial work, once banned in the UK for 30 years.
The first scene of the opening begins with a close-up of the protagonist Alex’s face, wearing a bowler hat, with false eyelashes under his right eye and an evil grin on his face. After that was a smooth, long stretched shot, revealing Alex's whole body and the three partners beside him in turn, all in white tights, while tasting milk tea, while conspiring to entertain himself at night. programme. The Kolova milk bar where Alex is in is decorated with peculiar decorations. All the objects are composed of white nude women with different poses. The chest is a table and the limbs are table legs. It can not help but immediately reminds people of the art of Dali and Dali. The taste, the futuristic taste of exaggeration and deformation, immediately widened the epochal distance between the movie and the audience, and established the keynote of the movie's surrealism.
The next 40 minutes or so is the most confusing stage for the audience to watch the movie. Alex bullying the homeless old beggar is just boring for fun, fighting with a group of gang-raping gangsters to show off their power, and forcibly breaking into the house is purely a playful prank; With the accompaniment of "Turkish March", the game shows Alex and the two girls on the bed in a way that speeds up the tempo of the camera; Alex sings "Song in the Rain" and dances to rape the writer's wife. ... Kubrick, who is cunning, uses Alex to enjoy the instinctive pleasure of violent attacks, constantly challenging the limit of the audience's consciousness: Do you hate or like evil thoughts? Do you feel excited or hate the violence? Or just feel that it is not realistic enough like a comic? Alex, an evil and heroic bad boy, is a little charming and ambiguous, and even awakens our already sleeping violent instincts.
Alex, who was arrested for the murder, began to accept the behavioral correction of his violent tendency by the social power organization. In prison, in order to be released as soon as possible, Alex voluntarily participated in a prisoner rehabilitation program. This transformation plan based on the principle of Pavlovian conditioned reflex, while forcing Alex to watch various violent scenes, while giving him drugs to make him feel nausea and vomiting, in order to make him feel artificially psychologically. Established a conditioned reflex to violent tendencies. Alex, whose eyelids were forcibly opened by equipment, was forced to watch movies of violence and sexual assault in pain. Alex's helpless, horrified, and almost collapsed eyes hit the audience's heart directly, as if he was looking directly at and asking the social power organization, in such a compulsive way to force people to do good, must it be moral?
This prisoner rehabilitation program is undoubtedly a success. In front of a group of politicians and prison executives, Alex’s conditioned aversion to violence and sexual assault was very satisfactory to them. Alex was identified as He was released from prison after successful reform. However, the society did not show a friendly and accepting attitude to welcome our Alex. His parents did not welcome him home, so they left home in anger, met the ridicule and bullying of the old beggar in the street, and unfortunately was tortured by two old accomplices who were policemen; Alex, who fled, happened to hit him again. Entering the writer’s house, sincere confession was not understood by the writer. Instead, the writer used the connection between Beethoven’s music and Alex’s violent impulse to torture him, and eventually caused Alex to die to seek to get rid of the hardship. The embarrassing situation of being a good person without success.
Alex survived the catastrophe, and public opinion began to unanimously condemn the immoral behavior of reforming prisoners in this way. Ironically, in order to restore the negative influence of public opinion, politicians made another news about Alex being visited by officials in the hospital. Facing a bunch of flashing lights smiling, Alex's expression became more and more weird. Just as we were stunned and suspicious, there was a scene of Alex and the woman making friends with the crowd in the crowd. This meaningful montage switch equates the rape of women by mobs with the rape of public opinion by politicians, expressing Kubrick's bitter ridicule and anger at the ugly behavior of politicians.
"Kindness comes from the heart. It is a person's free choice. When a person cannot choose freely, he is no longer alone." A clockwork orange originally meant a clockwork toy orange. The movie hints to us that Alex is not the end. It is a toy orange controlled by people. Although it eliminates vices, it obliterates personality and humanity. It is even more unfortunately reduced to a tool for politicians to profit for their own political purposes. Therefore, the movie "A Clockwork Orange" is more like a fable about the oppression of human nature in a rule-based society. This society of the weak and the strong is just a slaughterhouse that uses inhuman and more violent methods to control the evil instincts of human beings.
Spielberg said: "The characteristic of Kubrick's work is his carefully crafted sense of art." This film with a strong sense of form is not only reflected in the surreal and futuristic setting, but also In the violent process with exaggerated characters and dance performance, as well as in those abstract film scenes that can give the audience a sufficient visual impact. The scene in which Alex murdered the hostess with a male genital device was a classic shot that gave people a strong visual impact and shocking soul. Alex held the device and threw it at the woman who fell to the ground. The woman The face with its mouth wide open due to panic immediately switched to a modern-style abstract painting, and quickly flashed the exaggerated close-up of the mouth in the abstract painting. There was no blood, but it was more chilling than seeing blood.
Kubrick is unique, pioneering the use of various visual and auditory elements to express ideas, which not only greatly enriches our film language, but also broadens our vision of perception. This is the reason why Kubrick's works do not fade with the passage of time, are new over time, and are widely praised.
March 7, 2008, is the 9th anniversary of the death of this great film artist. I wrote this essay with great admiration, sending a fan's infinite memorial to the master.
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