A Clockwork Orange is considered one of the greatest films made by acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick. Based on the 1962 book by Anthony Burgess, the film tells the story of disturbed psychopath Alex and his violent gang of delinquents he calls the droogs. Alex and his gang are involved in a series of violent assaults and rapes, which they call "ultra violence", in a not-so-distant dystopian future. The turning point of the film occurs when Alex is arrested by the police for a particularly violent murder and is forced to undergo a forced rehabilitation process. The absolute brilliance of Kubrick's film is that it forces the audience to feel pity and empathy for what would otherwise be a truly disgusting character as Alex is tortured and made to suffer. The film uses standard science fiction conventions to investigate several interesting topics, including the nature of justice and free will. Stanley Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece A Clock Work Orange is a brilliant cinematic masterpiece thanks to its ability not only to feel revulsion towards one's own prejudices, but also for its ability to make the viewer empathize with a truly barbaric and disgusting character . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The greatest effect of Clock Work Orange is the sense of moral revulsion it creates in its viewer. The film does a magnificent job of challenging the viewer's cultural assumptions about morality by juxtaposing a character as brutal as Alex with the torture he endures after undergoing the Ludivico Technique. In the first 20 minutes of the film, Alex steals a car, paralyzes a man, rapes his wife, has sex with two underage girls and finally kills a woman in cold blood. In every way imaginable, Kubrick shapes Alex as the kind of despicable, evil character. He kills, steals and rapes without regard for any human life other than his own. Even when he enters the prison system, he attempts to adopt religion to manipulate the chaplain into giving him time off for good behavior. His only goal is to make it look like he has been reformed, that way he can be released and continue his sadistic campaign of "ultraviolence". Kubrick makes the audience feel a disgust for the character, which slowly turns into a desire to see Alex receive what he deserves for his actions. Kubrick then turns the audience's disgust with the character against them when Alex is forced to undergo a torturous trial. this makes him incapable of engaging in either sex or violence. As Alex faces punishment for his previous evil deeds to satiate the audience's bloodlust, something begins to change in the viewer. They begin to feel a sense of sympathy for the character. Alex is completely vulnerable in his conditioned state, unable to defend himself from the mercilessly vicious attacks perpetrated by those he had previously harmed. Alex is driven to such desperation that he even attempts to take his own life by jumping out of a window. The film forces the viewer to endure another bout of ultraviolence, but this time it's directed at Alex, and the viewer finds that it's not as fulfilling as he thought it would be. Therefore the viewer is faced with two ethical dilemmas. The first is whether it is justified to make a human being suffer because of the suffering he or she has caused others, and the second is whether goodness that is not done by choice is truly goodness. The film does a great job of making the audience engage with these two issues and answer the questions themselves. Eventually the viewer is shown that if Alex is allowed outfrom his conditioned state, he will simply return to the violent and sadistic lifestyle he engaged in before. This forces the audience to explore their feelings along two diametrically opposed extremes. Should an individual be free to make their own decisions even if those decisions are the wrong one? And is revenge really justice? And this is the brilliance of the film, Kubrick forces the viewer to engage intellectually with the film by shocking their sense of right and wrong. For me this technique has been very effective. At the beginning of the film I found myself absolutely disgusted by Alex. I wanted the film to hurt him as much as he had hurt others, and the film was more than happy to satiate my bloodlust. Yet, as I watched the sheer brutality of the way Alex was treated, I became disgusted with someone else, myself. I, like the angry mob in the film, would have liked to subject pain and suffering to another human being. I thought it would be justice, but it served little more than revenge. This is a very powerful effect that I have never seen used in a film before. The film turns your prejudices against you, and this allows you to truly hear what the film is trying to tell you about the nature of justice and free will. The film also uses recurring motifs to expose and expand its themes. One of the recurring motifs in the film is the use of Nadsat. Nadsat is a slang made up of a combination of Russian and Cockney English, Alex uses nadsat to describe the dystopian world and the situations he finds himself in. When the viewer is introduced to the strange slang of the droog, nadsat seems confusing and lacks meaning. It creates a sense of alienation between the viewer and the film's characters, as the use of heavy jargon makes it difficult for the audience to relate. Words do not have an easily definable meaning. As the film progresses, the viewer is given a better insight into the world of the droogs, a world of random chaos and violence, a place where bad things happen to good people for no particular reason. The meaninglessness of nadsat language perfectly captures the nihilistic violence inherent in the film, Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange is not only brilliant for its engaging philosophical themes and arguments, but also for its technical and innovative use of angles camerawork and special effects. In one particular scene the film shows Alex, in first person, jumping out of a window. This unique effect was achieved by tying a camera to a box and dropping it from a three-story window. In one of the film's most famous scenes, there is a close-up of Alex's face surrounded by his somas. He is drinking milk while staring unblinkingly at the camera. This scene is incredibly powerful, as it strongly implies Alex's malevolent ability to manipulate and control those around him for his own personal pleasure. The look in the character's eyes as he sips the milk is truly chilling due to the strong juxtaposition between the milk and the violent soma. Interesting use of camera angles like these are what makes A Clock Work Orange such a great film. Genre-wise, A Clock Work Orange is primarily science fiction. Although science fiction films tend to involve futuristic or alien technologies, their primary goal is to use these technologies to challenge conventional thinking or to illustrate something about human nature. A Clock Work Orange uses Ludivico's science fiction technique as a convention to challenge the viewer's conception of right and wrong. If such a device were to exist, would forcing an individual to commit good deeds make that person good? Make that one.