When I was studying psychology the last 4 years, I remembered one of my professors told me a story about conditioning the human behaviour. He gave us an example of the movie A Clockwork Orange. That time I wasn't interestes in watching it because the way he told the story was kinda exaggerating.
Yesterday my mind came across this and I decided to watch this movie. And guess how amazed I am watching this movie. It's kinda hypnotic though, after watching it lots if images from the movie was recorded to my brain. Let's see what I think about it.
The movie starts with this creepy staring from a guy slowly zoomed-out in a prolonged time. That opening scene really freaks me out, I thought I couldn't continue watching. So the narrator began to tell a story about himself, Alex, who then we know that he's an ultra-violent punk who goes out at night and beat up people, rapes girls and murder them.
Apparently he's also violent and shows a lot of authority to his gang member, in which his actions got himself a karma. His friends/gang member set him up on a crime scene where later he got busted by the police and end up in jail. Spending time in jail he accepted to take an experimental treatment from the government where they say they can 'cure' his violent behaviour.
This treatment involves conditioning process where Alex is placed on a chair with a straight jacket, then his eyes were forced open to watch a series of images in front of him. The images includes a violent act, a raping scene with 7 guys, and a visual of the Nazi army marching. At first Alex doesn't feel a thing but then later on he starts to feel nausea for those images. He's keen to the music of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the experimetal people use it too for conditioning.
It was then until several sessions his violent behaviour was cured. He starts feeling nausea everytime he tries to do something 'bad'. But then, does it really works? Through the end of the movie we can see that something goes wrong to his treatment and he came back to his natural behaviour.
This is a very brilliant movie I must say, Stanley Kubrick has done mindblowing on the viewers. This movie will make you feel repulsed by Alex but on some point will show some empathy for him in being a victim of the government illegal experiment. Yes that treatment is considered illegal because it causes the dehumanization of a person. You can't change the natural behaviour of someone and apparently Alex goes back to his old behaviour.
The artistic of this movie is very well done. It was set at a near future at that time, but for us who are already in the future would think that it took place on a somehow quirky-retro-vintage future. The props made the film recognizable such as the stand out phallic object or the female statue/milk dispenser or Alex
room with Beethoven curtain and his pointy bedcover.
As well as the directions and settings, the main actor did a great job on portaying the punk violent Alex. I never been so intricated by this kind of character before. He's like playing on your emotions, duudeee-what-are-you-doing-to-me is my reaction. My first reaction actually on the beginning of the movie hahaha.
The character Alex also symbolizes the rebel in the society full of authority from the government.
I now understand why my professor was exagerrating explaining this movie, maybe because it's so great that he could't express it better. It's like if there was an extra language for describing it he would use it.
#I will update with screenshots and images because it's not enough expressing with just words. My internet connection is off rn and I'm writing via mobile. You guys can check it later :) #
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