A Clockwork Orange
Shocking there’s no review for this yet here. My intention, then, was to do one of my “reviewing while watching” style reviews, but I think nothing speaks so well of this movie as the fact that I wrote just one line (that first sentence) before getting so hooked I for once found myself “away” from the computer.
From the very opening tones of Wendy Carlos’ score and the starkly saturated title cards, this movie screams subversion. The opening line, “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milk Bar, trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening …” – these days, God forbid you should throw out a new word or phrase without explaining what it means about three times over and usually about an hour before it’s important – here we’re given all of Anthony Burgess’ language with only context and tone to interpret by, right from the outset: “Milk plus velocet, synthemesc or drencrom.” – who knows what that means? and yet we do.
The dialogue has so much rhythm to it. That’s what struck me so much about the movie on this viewing. Nevermind how a movie can be so funny, yet so shocking, and yet so intelligent – beyond intelligent – in addition to being one of a kind on the visual scale, chock full of performances, all of which again possess that crazy combo of hilarity and intelligence.
It’s just one of those movies where everything simply comes together. There’s no argument to this one, it is and always will be one of the greatest movies ever made, not to mention one of my favourites. Part of me feels like I should elaborate more in my reviewing of it, but most of me knows, it’s really not necessary. This is about as classic as it gets.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:32 am
[...] Jeez, another of my faves shockingly sans review as yet. There was a moment early on here where I worried I’d picked the wrong time to watch this movie again, especially for a “first review” (I’m sure I must’ve written about it before on a previous and lost incarnation of the site) – like, I don’t really “need” this movie as much right now as I have in the past and probably will again. This review is gonna be shorter than I’d like, but sort of the same as I was with A Clockwork Orange the other day, I don’t know if it’s really necessary for me to do anything here beyond point out that this movie is just perfect, it just is. It is a little slow starting, the cynicism and passive aggressiveness becomes plain stifling as the minutes pile up before Tyler shows up proper – but then, it just never stops building, layer up layer upon layer … and when the time comes, it gives you the ending required by all that building – it damn well explodes on you. Again as with A Clockwork Orange, I’m struck by the combination of intelligence, shock and humour, and again, not so much by the language as the dialogue – the way the bulk of the movie’s now well-known soundbites (“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time,” “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero,”) are thrown out on an almost subliminal basis – like mid-exposition, Norton will come out with one of these sentences that almost makes no sense at the time, but the more they pile up, the more you get it. The entire cast is brilliant, the visuals beautiful, the Dust Brothers’ score rocks. It just strikes me as beyond talking about, this one – anyway, I just remembered the first rule [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 2:56 am
[...] A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick [...]