A Clockwork Orange is one of the most important cinematic masterpieces ever committed to film and I don’t say that lightly. Based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess, the 1971 film was directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred Malcolm McDowell. The film chronicles the crime spree of a group of thugs led by McDowell’s character, McDowell’s capture, and then his rehabilitation through psychological retraining. In the film, no one is ultimately good. Even the correctional officers trying to aid Alex, McDowell’s character, have a certain garish quality to them that makes you not want to trust them. Even in the end, when Alex is reconditioned, it involuntary. Sure, you could say that prison is an involuntary state of being but Alex loses the one thing that all free people lose eventually – free will.

Alex is not reconditioned through a recognized moral awakening that what he did was wrong, but instead a media bombardment that reconditioned his thought patterns to fall in line with society’s structure. In the end, you began to wonder if Alex’s “hoodlum” behavior is in fact a negative interpretation of his individuality. The most criminal of persons in a lot of societies, including ours, is the individual, the one who doesn’t buy into the moral gospel the government is peddling, nor does he need their approval to feel justified or needed. Then there is the psychiatric aspect in the film. Those bastions of moral clarity that shine a light into the hazy darkness of a troubled mind and declare that is the only way forward. Like the elected officials we choose only half willingly, it is not okay to call their methods into question, even when they dictate more than engage.

Thus, we come back to what is normal. Those plagued by the discontent of everyday, like Alex, are forever being brought back into line by the rule setters. Those whose perception of normal exists only in the most eschewed and paralytic vision possible. A Clockwork Orange remains a harsh film, even today. It is of a society that we are slowly becoming, or maybe it is we’ve always been that way. Maybe it takes a film or a book to show us our folly.