A Clockwork Orange

In a community where gang raping, robberies and murders happened nightly, lies a charismatic delinquent and anti hero, Alex DeLarge. A sociopath, teenager who’s sees the society to please his sexual, cynical, and frightening desires. The name ‘DeLarge’ allows the character to adapt himself as ‘Alexander the large’. This references ‘Alexander the Great’, which feeds his egotistical mind as well as creating a witty sexual pun.

To help create the concept of the film and the character of Alex, is his 136 minutes of narration. Within this Alex takes us on his world of the near future, of consistent orgies and attacks performed by him, and his friends. Otherwise known as, “a bit of the Ultra-violence” with the ‘Droogs’.  The film beings with the droogs sitting in their beloved social hangout, drinking milk-druged cocktails, named ‘milk-plus’. This is to hype themselves up for the commencing night.

The name ‘Clockwork Orange’ is completely appropriate for the deeper metaphorical meaning of the story. It touches on Pavlovian laws on conditioning. This is displayed in one particular famous scene in which, Alex is a victim of government criminal conditioning. He is drugged and shown disturbing images of his past lifestyle. As result, Alex becomes the ‘perfect’ citizen’ but at the cost of his free will. This raises many questions like, how should society control the ‘evil’ in us, with typical confinement or techniques like positive conditioning? The title allows us to understand that although Alex is completely organic being, on the outside, he is an otherwise known inside as a mechanical structure. 

Alex is a horrific and complicated character. Nerveless, intelligent and quick witted with sophisticated taste in music. He is particularly fond of Beethoven or “Lovely Ludwig Van”. Alex never justifies his actions and although as unlikable he may be, manages to create pity from the audience. This is because we hear from first hand experience his unending suffering and through his realization that his life is a vicious cycle that can not be altered.

LINKS
Trailer...

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3502113049/
Article...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/11/a-clockwork-orange-cannes