Introduction to clockwork orange's Story

Introduction to clockwork orange's Story | Appreciation | Reflection

197 1 color film 136 minutes

Produced by British Bolaris Film Company.

Producer and Director: stanley kubrick (based on Anthony Burgess's novel of the same name) Photography: John alcott The main actors: Malcolm mcdowell (Alex), Patrick Maggie (Alexander) and Michael Bates (Warden).

This film won three nominations (best film, best director and best adapted screenplay) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts of America with 197 1, and two awards from the New York Film Critics Association for best film and best director.

abstract

Alex is the leader of a four-person juvenile criminal group. He plays truant during the day and sleeps at home. In the evening, he led his accomplices to seek trouble and engage in all kinds of heinous criminal activities.

One night, he and his accomplices-Peter, George and Tim-sat in the Cowova Milk Bar, drinking milk and racking their brains to come up with ideas, and engaged in some extreme violence in the dead of night. The target they chose was the writer Alexander and his wife.

A group of them went to the writer's home. On the road, I met an old tramp, lying drunk on the side of the road, humming a tune and begging from them. They beat him up for no reason. Then, they came to an abandoned casino and saw the "billy the kid" gang trying to * * * a girl. The enemy was particularly jealous as soon as they met, and the two hooligans immediately scuffled. Suddenly, the police came and they ran away in a hurry. Then, four people drove at high speed and deliberately entered the retrograde lane, causing many traffic accidents. Finally, they came to the door of the Alexander couple's residence.

Alex knocked at the door and lied about an accident. His friend was injured and bleeding, and he wanted to call an ambulance by phone. The writer and his wife opened the door based on humanitarianism. They rushed into the room, * * * was furious, overturned bookshelves, kicked disabled writers, tied the writers up, stripped off his wife in front of him, and abused * * *. After * * * was fully vented and satisfied, they went back to Coroba Bar to drink.

Alex is a music lover, especially Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ... After the night of violence, he came home, turned on the record player and enjoyed the beautiful Beethoven music, thus ending the day "perfectly".

Seeking * * * through violence against others is an indispensable part of Alex's life. Their next violent target is Mrs. Cat who lives alone in the suburbs. Mrs Cat runs a fitness club, named after living with a group of black and white domestic cats. Alex and other four people came to the door of the bodybuilding club and tried to cheat the writer into the club, but they were rejected. If one plan fails, another will be born. They slipped into the club through the window. When Alex sneaked into the training hall, Mrs. Cat was surprised because she had just called the police station to say that the mob had left. Mrs. Cat stepped forward and fought fiercely with the mob, but unfortunately, she died at Alex's hands. When Alex learned that the police were coming and prepared to flee the scene, his partner Tim knocked him unconscious with a bottle and was arrested by the police. Alex usually uses violence to subdue his accomplices, but now he has finally got revenge.

Alex was sentenced and put in prison. One day, the Minister of the Interior inspected the prison, selected Alex as the experimenter of "Criminal Correction Law" and transferred him to Ludovico Medical Center for psychological reform experiment. After the experiment began, Alex was taken to the screening room twice a day and forced to watch all kinds of atrocity films. When the film of fascist atrocities was shown, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was played, which made Alex unbearable and had a strong feeling of vomiting, but he wanted to die. At the end of the experiment, he was "completely" corrected and became a so-called "newcomer" who was beneficial to society.

Alex was released and went home to find a young tenant living in his room. The young man is very kind to his parents, far better than himself. When Alex saw this, he knew there was no room for him at home, so he had to wander in the street. In the street, I happened to meet an old tramp who was beaten by him and begged him. Unfortunately, I was recognized and beaten by a group of old vagrants. The two policemen who saved him were his former accomplices, Tim and George. They took him to a secluded place in the suburbs by car, beat him with batons, tortured him by putting his head in the water until he was dying, and then left contentedly. Alex was black and blue, crawling in the rain, and fell at the door of a house, only to fall into the hands of his victim writer. Knowing its weakness through news reports, the writer turned the volume of the record player to the maximum and forced him to listen to the ninth symphony. Alex rushed frantically to the window.

Alex committed suicide by jumping off a building and was seriously injured in hospital. The Minister of the Interior made a special trip to the hospital to "visit". On behalf of * *, he expressed "apology" and made proper arrangements for his future life. The purpose of all this is only to refute the opposition's condemnation of this incident, regain the trust of voters and win votes for the general election.

At the end of the film, Alex returned to his former self, being a woman again and having a good time. The film ends with singing in the rain.

Distinguish and appreciate

Clockwork orange is one of Kubrick's representative works, with novel conception, profound implication and exquisite production. It is the author's reflection on the future British society and a controversial film worth discussing.

The film's title "clockwork orange" originally refers to a toy orange with clockwork, which is used here to show that Alex, a juvenile delinquent, is actually a manipulated "toy orange" and a tool for serving politicians' campaigns.

The film begins with a close-up of Alex's head. His right eye is decorated with false eyelashes and he has a glass of milk in his hand. The camera moves to the middle position. We see Tim sitting on the left, Peter sitting on the right and George sitting on Tim's left. This group of juvenile criminals, headed by Alex, sat in the Cowova milk bar after nightfall, drinking milk and planning atrocities at night. The camera continued to move back to the panorama, and we saw that the tables and furnishings in the bar were very futuristic. The shape of the table is a naked woman lying down, with a strange shape and cross flow. Kubrick pointed out the theme with simple and smooth action shots: sex and violence in the future society.

Sex and violence are serious problems that plague contemporary western society and become the theme of many artists' creation. Kubrick made a profound analysis of this issue from the perspective of sociology and turned his perspective to the future. We can see that violent scenes are everywhere in the film, and they are often associated with sex. But the most shocking scene is * * *. Alex and his accomplices wear strange masks and have long, thick noses (similar to * * *). After entering the writer Alexander's house by deception, they disabled him first and then married his wife in front of him. Kubrick closely followed the movement of * * with a hand-held camera, which made us clearly see the whole process of violence by juvenile offenders and the struggle of the writer's wife, thus greatly strengthening the cruelty of this crime and the tension of the audience. Horrible brutality and violence, the theme song of "Singing in the Rain" that Alex hummed easily, and the funny and exaggerated action counterpoint are all Kubrick's ingenious brushstrokes, which make the picture and music oppose each other in content, rhythm, artistic conception and atmosphere, make the music rich in connotation, express the content of the film more deeply and deepen the theme.

The violent passage in Mrs. Cat Fitness Club is also an important passage to express the above theme. Mrs. Cat lives alone in a remote place in the suburbs and becomes an ideal target for robbery and violence by Alex and his associates. They tried to cheat into the club, but failed, and alarmed Mrs. Cat and called the police. They entered the room through the window. Alex once again puts on a mask that looks like * * * and meets Mrs. Cat in the training hall. The training hall is arranged simply and strangely. With Alex's eyesight, we saw many murals of naked women on the wall and a huge sculpture on the table ... In such a pornographic atmosphere, Kubrick described the scene of Mrs. Cat fighting with Alex with a set of wide-angle lenses: Mrs. Cat fought fiercely with Beethoven (Alex's favorite musician) bust and Alex with * * * porcelain sculpture (Mrs. Cat's favorite artwork). Finally,

At Mrs. Cat's residence, Alex was betrayed by his partner and arrested by the police. Alex's arrest is a turning point in the film, from a hateful but energetic criminal to a sympathetic but lifeless "experiment".

* * * In order to show his outstanding achievements and cheat votes, the Minister of the Interior creatively came up with a set of so-called "crime correction laws" and conducted psychological reform experiments in Ludovico Medical Center to transform evil criminals into law-abiding citizens. Alex volunteered for the experiment in order to get out of prison as soon as possible. This "correction method" is absurd. The criminal in the experiment was wearing tights, tied tightly to a chair, and his eyelids were caught by clips, which made him unable to close them. He had to concentrate on watching atrocity films and slowly produce conditioned reflex to achieve the purpose of "correction". In order to enhance the visual effect of the scene, Kubrick used a set of close-ups to let the audience clearly see the changes of Alex's facial expressions (especially his eyes) when watching the atrocity film, which made the audience feel sorry for him. With the experiment, human dignity and vitality gradually disappeared from Alex. When the stage performance was used to prove that the psychological reform experiment was completely successful, Alex's humiliation reached its climax. He has become a toy completely at the mercy of others, a "clockwork orange" with the key in the hands of the Minister of the Interior, a living advertisement used by the Minister of the Interior to show off his achievements and win votes, and a living bargaining chip for party struggle. Naturally, the audience's sympathy turned completely to Alex.

After Alex was completely corrected, he was released home. The following narrative repeats the plot of the first part of the film almost event by event. The difference is that Alex became a victim this time: forced to leave his warm home and wander the streets, beaten by a group of old tramps and beaten by his former partner who turned into a policeman. When he climbed to a house for help on a rainy night, it happened to fall into the hands of the writer, which became not only his trump card now, but also his trump card. The screenwriter tortured Alex mercilessly with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, forcing him to have a nervous breakdown and commit suicide by jumping out of the window. Here, Kubrick used high-speed photography, so that we can clearly see him slowly jumping into the blue sky from the window. This jump allowed Alex to return to his old self and be reborn, but "rebirth" did not make him get rid of the sad situation of being used and manipulated, but once again became the "clockwork orange" in the hands of the Minister of the Interior and continued to serve the campaign and politics. At the end of the film, Alex enjoys himself in the crowd, which shows that pornography and violence are two major cancers that the future society cannot get rid of, and we must let go.

Since Alex was arrested and imprisoned, the film has actually turned to another theme: human free will. This film tells us that people need to have free will and the right to choose. Once a person is deprived of these rights and loses his personality, he becomes a tame tool, just like a machine, and loses the meaning of being a man. In the film, the theme is explained by the priest. He explicitly opposed the psychological reform experiment conducted at Ludovico Medical Center. He believes that this practice is hypocritical and immoral, which makes people lose their free will and the right to choose and serve politics. The priest's thought is Kubrick's thought. Kubrick used 65,438+000 shots (two books) to vividly and concretely describe the absurdity of Ludovico's experiment, especially to contraposition cruel violence (fascist atrocities) with beautiful classical music (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony), so as to make the audience feel that this experiment is not only absurd, but also stifles human nature, desecrates human dignity and has inhuman essence.

According to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, "people's emotional life is composed of some opposing factors." He believes that even in childhood, children keep a balance in the contradiction between love and hate. Freud's view of human cruelty boils down to death instinct. In his view, only when a part of this death instinct turns to the outside world as an attack and destruction instinct will it become public, and this destructive extroversion "constitutes the biggest obstacle to the progress of civilization". As early as 1905, Freud wrote: "cruelty can easily become the nature of children." In his new psychoanalysis, he added: "Experience shows that even if the cultivation process is full of tenderness and caress, the superego will acquire the same harsh and heartless characteristics." Freud made a detailed psychological analysis of human love and hate, cruelty and cruelty, and reached a pessimistic conclusion about human civilization and human psychology.

It is no accident that Kubrick expounded his pessimistic view of the future society through clockwork orange. Freud's psychoanalytic theory had a great influence on literary and artistic creation in the 20th century, especially on movies. Kubrick showed us the terrible scene of the future society through the image of Alex, which is an image interpretation of this theory. Since cruelty has become a part of human nature, violence (including sexual violence) is inevitable. Although Alex grew up in a warm and comfortable environment, his violent tendency is also very obvious and cannot be corrected. Forced correction will be counterproductive, and eventually he will return to violence. Of course, we can't agree with this pessimistic view of human society.

Stanley kubrick is a famous American director who lives in Britain. In style and temperament, he is the director who is closest to the "author film" in Europe, but he does not go to extremes. His films are innovative in art and have high box office value in business. They are what we often call "applause and box office" movies. Kubrick filmed his first feature film Fear and Desire in 1953, and completed All Metal Jacket in 1987. A total of 13 films were produced, with a small number but high quality. Before Full Metal Jacket came out, three films were his famous trilogy and three masterpieces of his artistic achievements. These three films are: Dr. Qi Ai (1963), 200 1 A Space Journey (1968) and clockwork orange. All three films discussed the major issues that perplexed contemporary human society. Dr. Strange Love describes an unexpected imaginary war between the United States and the Soviet Union, involving the Cold War after World War II. Space 200 1 year describes the evolution of human beings from apes to space travel. It is the pioneer of modern science fiction movies, and touches on the space problems that contemporary human beings care about. Clockwork orange reveals the serious social problems of juvenile delinquency, conceives an absurd solution to correct violent behavior, and reflects the director's pessimistic view of the future society. Film critic David Denby wrote: "Kubrick is like a black slate (referring to the symbolic slate in 200 1 A Space Odyssey). It is a supernatural intelligent force, which will appear in screams every long time, giving the world a kick and making it by going up one flight of stairs on the evolutionary ladder." From Kubrick's representative works, we can see that he is a serious film artist who cares about human destiny and social problems, constantly innovates in art, strives for perfection in technology and has a unique style.