50 years of a Clockwork Orange

After fifty years, Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick is always the same movie. Violent, terrible, extreme, full of excesses, absurd things, of blood, of disfigured naked bodies, of faces bent by pain and suffering, of hands that grasp and have no mercy.

When it was first presented in New York, it was not a success. But later, with the release in the hall, Clockwork Orange he managed to break records, collect and relaunch his author. Kubrick wanted to harshly criticize the violent drift of those years. Instead, many let themselves be captured by the imagery of the film.

Clockwork Orange he had to lay bare the hypocrisies of society, show the righteous for what they were, lay bare the corrupt, the criminals and the absurd idea of ​​a good world because it was unaware of the ugliness of every day, because it was convinced that it could control others. Violence, in Clockwork Orange, it’s everywhere. It is in the protagonist, Alex, in the drughs who follow him, in the police who then arrest him, and in the institutions, in the family, in the meeting places and in culture. The very idea of ​​ultra-violence, here, is taken to another level, and freed of any preconceptions. And there is no mystification, no attempt to elevate it.

It’s disturbing, Clockwork Orange: You can’t see it without being shocked by the rapes, beatings and murders. Kubrick’s is a photograph: set in another time, of course, with a particular aesthetic and vision, absolutely; but still truthful, sincere, obscenely concrete. Where are the monsters, where are they hiding? Are the young people so safe and without structures and restraints? Or are they adults, the ones who tell young people what to be and how to be? Are the controllers taking advantage of the situation, of what is happening, to be free to use any means? What is really right? Eliminate any moral compass, make people unable to choose and decide, or try to act on reality, on what it actually is? Is Alex, played by Malcolm McDowell, the victim or the executioner? Does he deserve to be condemned or to be saved? And by whom, then?

The issue of violence is a particularly topical issue. But the relationship between narration and staging, between what is told and story, is also important. How far can authors, directors and writers go for their story? How many disclaimers do you need today to be able to distribute a film like Clockwork Orange? And what is the limit that no one – not even the best, not even talent – can overcome? These are questions that come back and that, even now, do not find a definitive answer. Because yes, art must be free but freedom, in itself, is not enough. Men are no longer aware, and capture the essence – and therefore the message and social criticism – of a film like Clockwork Orange it’s not that straightforward. Perhaps lacking a deeper ability to understand what is being told, to contextualize it, to analyze it without exalting or demonizing it.

Clockwork Orange, after fifty years, it is still the same film; and now, for three days, it returns to the hall in a new version. The sticks, the blood, the torn clothes, the screams of the women, the groans of the men, and the idea of ​​being right anyway. It is a snake that bites its own tail, because even Alex, at a certain point, finds himself on the other side, and is bent, broken, chewed and spat out by society: his drughts are his executioners, the wounded people become the his torment. And just after so much suffering and so much anguish, he returns to the starting point: the company, in order not to accept its failure, is ready to compromise with anyone: and Alex is free again and is himself again. Now, however, it is also the fundamental cog in a larger machine.