(no subject)
Jul. 5th, 2003 03:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbWell, now I've seen A Clockwork Orange on the big screen. (My only previous viewing was on VHS in high school, long enough ago that this was effectively my first time again.) It was better than I remembered/expected, although parts of it now plays mostly as camp--a fact of which I was repeatedly reminded by Beavis and Butthead in the row behind me.
During the pivotal torture scene--where Alex is inadvertently forced to associate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with physical discomfort--I thought about the way the scene is mirrored to the audience. While Alex is simultaneously seeing images of violence, hearing Beethoven, and experiencing pain, we in the theater are simultaneously seeing repulsive images of violence (including that perpetrated against Alex) and hearing Beethoven ourselves. Kubrick must have known that some viewers would forever associate the Ode to Joy with torture.
I wonder if he understood that the horrible synthesizer-vocoder rendition of the symphony he used was punishment enough.
Before the movie started, they showed the trailers for Sexy Beast, which I quite liked, and The Minus Man, which I liked more (plus it had a great trailer). Neither one of them is showing as part of this midnight movie series, or any other time soon. Why would they do that to us?
During the pivotal torture scene--where Alex is inadvertently forced to associate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with physical discomfort--I thought about the way the scene is mirrored to the audience. While Alex is simultaneously seeing images of violence, hearing Beethoven, and experiencing pain, we in the theater are simultaneously seeing repulsive images of violence (including that perpetrated against Alex) and hearing Beethoven ourselves. Kubrick must have known that some viewers would forever associate the Ode to Joy with torture.
I wonder if he understood that the horrible synthesizer-vocoder rendition of the symphony he used was punishment enough.
Before the movie started, they showed the trailers for Sexy Beast, which I quite liked, and The Minus Man, which I liked more (plus it had a great trailer). Neither one of them is showing as part of this midnight movie series, or any other time soon. Why would they do that to us?
