A Clockwork Orange

I was horrified at this movie. I couldn't imagine this movie coming out now, and I didn't even think something like this would be allowed to be produced in the 70's. It was horrifying to watch and there were more than a few times when I thought I would have to bail on the whole thing. I would suggest not watching this movie alone; I watched it with my roommate and we stopped halfway through and finished it another day. It's just too damn much of a burden for one person to hold on their own--please watch this movie with someone else. My roommate told me that everything was supposed to make sense in the end, like, there was supposed to be this big revelation and audiences everywhere where supposed to go "OH that's why everything happened and why everyone was so terrible" however, we finished the movie and I was left just as disgusted and confused as the rest of the movie.

A Clockwork Orange is interesting because you get no context for what you are watching. You just start the movie and all this weird shit starts happening and you just have to go with it. I can't really give a synopsis of what the plot is but basically because of circumstances there's these gangs of teenagers that do ultra violent and illegal things. Most of what happens is they break into peoples houses and rape women. The main character Alex gets caught and he is "rehabilitated" by the government. That's basically it, only, the way Stanley Kubrick shows us this story is disturbing and really not fun.

The main thing that stood out for me during this movie was the long, drawn out shots of the scenes. In some cases full scenes would happen in under five shots. The first thing that happened that made me think I wasn't going to like this movie was that in the very beginning there is a shot of Alex with his head tilted down but his eyes peering right up into the camera and the shot starts super close to this face and backs up down a hall for a painfully long time, all while Alex doesn't break eye contact with the camera. Its a great shot to establish where the gang is and what they are doing there, but also to show how crazy our main character is. Nothing he does in this shot is "crazy" but the way he never breaks contact and the look on his face gives the idea that this guy isn't gonna do anything worth praising in this movie. I know the ridiculously long shots are a staple of Stanley Kubrick's directing, but it really stood out to me in this movie.
I want to say there were at least three rape/rapey scenes. They're super disturbing and I would not recommend watching this movie solely because those scenes are ultra fucked up and just generally not fun to watch. The contrast between how joyful the gang kids are and how absolutely horrible the things they're doing are is cinematically very interesting and inventive; I understand that. I just can't derive value from something that makes me feel gross for watching it.
The ending of this movie really confused me, and after some intense googling I feel like I understand the ending much more that I did before, but I don't feel like the payoff was that great. It's supposed to symbolize the manipulation of the government and how values change based on factors that can benefit certain people. They "fixed" Alex because the things he was doing were heinous, but the way they went about "fixing" him were deemed unethical and cruel by the public, so they reverted him back to how terrible he was before. So after he's back to his normal self, talking about sex and violence, everyone praises him and the government for bringing him back to his first mindset where they wanted him changed in the first place. I get the meaning and how it's symbolic of our own culture (sort of) and how it's a cautionary tale, but after that mess of a movie I had just watched, it wasn't nearly enough of a revelation to make me forgive it.

I can see where people who praise and rave about this movie are coming from. A Clockwork Orange has been on my to-watch list for a while now, and now that I've finally seen it I understand why people have been telling me "if you love movie you need to see this movie" because cinematically this movie is pretty much a masterpiece.  But I just couldn't enjoy this movie because of how foul it was and I certainly wish I had never seen it. That said, I'm going to read the book because I find that the books movies were made from offer more substance and more consolidation for their actions. Also, Stanley Kubrick didn't follow the ending in the book. The quote I read was something along the lines of he didn't feel it was the true ending of the book and he also didn't think American audiences would be satisfied with the ending in the book. So I would love to read the book in hopes that I can derive something from the story; maybe I'll understand more of the background of this society because the movie gave me no context, I just perceived it as blind violence. I'm hoping to appreciate some part of the story by reading the book, and maybe I'll be able to change my thoughts on the movie.