Clockwork orange was rated as an X-rated film by the American Film Censorship Board for its violence and pornography. One year after the film was released, Kubrick cut out the 30-second scene in the film and changed the rating of "clockwork orange" to R, and Britain directly banned the film from being shown in China until 2000.
The film tells the story of Alex, an unscrupulous teenager. After being arrested and imprisoned by the police, he voluntarily accepted special personality therapy in order to regain his freedom, but he was persecuted by justice after his recovery.
Stanley kubrick has always been famous for his great and absurd genius and insight into the essence of human philosophy.
For example, the movie "clockwork orange" that we are talking about today.
Kubrick used Beethoven's music as BGM in the whole film, which made people feel alienated and absurd, and at the same time impressed.
A movie fan once quipped, "I have always kept my mouth shut about Kubrick's films without writing reviews." .
Basically, Kubrick's works must be excellent.
Ok, let's talk about the classic of clockwork orange.
When Kubrick filmed clockwork orange, he used deliberately exaggerated Broadway comedy style to show the tragic story that people as independent individuals finally failed in fighting against the whole alien society.
This is a movie that makes people feel shocked and worried after watching it. Under the shackles, everyone is brainwashed and never has absolute freedom.
The film is full of strong postmodern style, which fully embodies Kubrick's postmodern aesthetics through the "alienation effect" created by bright and dark light, visual symbols with expressionism and Kubrick-style violent aesthetic lens.
1. Broadway-style alienation absurd narrative style Kubrick inherited the drama style of Brecht, the master of drama, and adopted a sense of alienation to deal with many plots.
For example, in the story of a violent girl, several men hit a naked woman with a circular spotlight, and the surrounding background was bleak. All the focus is on the violence, which naturally forms the stage effect through the contrast between light and dark, and the cheerful Beethoven March No.9 deliberately added by the director makes the scene look like a Broadway farce.
This unique approach gives people a sense of alienation and deconstruction of "dispelling violence", and the audience intervenes in the plot as a bystander to spy on the protagonist's life and this dirty world full of sex and violence.
The same is true of the fighting scenes in the film. Slow-motion processing and actors' exaggerated performances make Alex and his partners look like clowns performing on the stage. The director's handling method obviously weakens the evil and darkness of sex and violence. Instead, he treats this dark world with a playful attitude, treating criminal acts as games or performances, which weakens the director's judgment on this evil world.
In addition, the color of the film is also very bold, using bright and bright colors, such as red and blue, which also represents the style of Broadway and shows the strong drama of the film.
2. Kubrick's "aesthetics of violence" kills Quentin, and John Woo's "expressionism", as the predecessor of postmodernism, is still well reflected in this film.
Kubrick got the essence of "expressionism". He is good at expressing the psychological activities of the characters through a set of lenses that peek into the inner world of the protagonist, which is an important feature of expressionism.
The film clockwork orange is narrated from Alex's first-person perspective, which inevitably involves the subjective emotions of the protagonist.
Friendly reminder: the following involves small spoilers.
At the end of the film, Alex, who tried to commit suicide, achieved a "complete recovery" mentally, and the camera went deep into his inner world again. On the booth paved with white powder, he was naked and touching with a beautiful woman in full view, which made Alex regain his "spiritual freedom" and rekindled his joy in sex and violent impulses. At this time, he reached an emotional climax.
Kubrick's violent aesthetics is completely different from Quentin's, and it is also obviously higher than John Woo's simplicity and rudeness.
Kubrick's violence aesthetics is more realistic.
There are many violent images in clockwork orange, including sexual violence. Kubrick made no secret of his expression of violence. Through the exaggerated and impactful pictures from boxing to direct injection of flesh and blood, the cruelty and bloodiness of violence are undoubtedly revealed, but at the same time, it produces an unreal feeling and pays more attention to expressionism.
3. Postmodernism images and Kubrick metaphor Postmodernism was the mainstream artistic trend of thought in the literary and art circles in the 1970s, and "sexual revolution" became the "mainstream" topic of many films at that time.
The film clockwork orange is full of postmodernism.
Movies have many distinctive semiotic metaphors in scenery, props, character modeling and so on.
For example:
Catwoman's home has many explicit pictures and exposed handicrafts. Alex's "prop" to kill Catwoman is a handicraft in the shape of a man's penis.
In addition, Alex's model of burglary wears a mask with a long nose, which is also a metaphor for sex.
Freud once mentioned in his masterpiece The Interpretation of Dreams that all long-handled objects can be used as metaphors of male genitalia. In the movie clockwork orange, a long nose mask, a crutch and a snake all play metaphorical roles in sex.
Alex's pet is a patterned snake, which was specially designed by the director. Alex let the snake crawl freely on the poster of naked women on the wall, forming an attractive sexual metaphor picture, which is the director's implicit expression of "sexual liberation".
The film critics in new york named clockwork orange as the best film of the year in the United States at 197 1.
Kubrick was then the director of the year. At the same time, he was nominated for best film, best director, best adapted script and best film editing. ?
There is no doubt that Kubrick is a movie master who transcends the times and ranks among the imperial palaces.
He is respected and admired by many younger generations, such as Steven Allan Spielberg. Spielberg once benefited from Kubrick and got the script ET Alien, which was passed down as a film story.
Clockwork orange is a textbook-level work, whether it is the expression of lens language or the excavation of theme meaning, which is why it is still regarded as a classic in film history after half a century.
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