A Clockwork Orange, 1971, directed by Stanley Kubrick, Warner Bros. Blu-ray (2007), 5 stars.
It had been a long time since I watched A Clockwork Orange. This is the second or third time I have watched it start to finish. It has never ever been better than it was this time.
This movie is unmitigated brilliance, the third straight masterpiece delivered by Stanley Kubrick (following Dr. Strangelove in 1964 and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968).
Of course I remembered three or four iconic scenes from A Clockwork Orange, cinematic images that always will be stuck in my brain. The revelation this time around is the astonishing performance of Malcolm McDowell. I didn't remember that he carried the entirety of the 136-minute film on his back, and he didn't flinch for a second.
Everything about A Clockwork Orange worked perfectly for me -- the startling cinematic imagery, the multidialectal poetry of McDowell's voiceover narration, the philosophical absurdity of the story arc. It all landed on target.
It is not entirely uncommon for my head to explode at the unexpected brilliance of a movie I've seen for the first time. But I don't know if it's happened to me much with a film I'm seeing for the second or third time. It happened this time.
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You're right.
ReplyDeleteKubrick was really on a roll at this point, one that started with one of the greatest war movies ever ("Paths of Glory"), followed by a near masterpiece ("Spartacus") and "Lolita", an honorable stab at an impossible-to-film novel.
Thanks, Bill. I've got Lolita on my watchlist. Have never seen it, but it sounds tantalizing.
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