(no subject)

[jfb]

Well, 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?

Comments

A Clockwork Orange

[tombking.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see it on a big screen. I would like to. I find it interesting it was released with an X rating (way back when X had not been taken over by the porn industry) and I would imagine that today it would probably get a PG-13 or maybe an R though the only thing that seems to give movies an R rating anymore is violence/gore that makes the stuff in A Clockwork Orange tame (though the way it is portrayed in that film still makes me crigne) and the word Fuck. I am not sure if that word or any other normal expletive is actually used in the film but it has been quite awhile since I have seen it.