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[Santo]

I finally got around to seeing this gem and bought it on DVD right after. But I'm still trying to decipher a lot of the movie. For example, I know they have their own little language setup and in most parts it isn't hard to make sense of what they're saying, it's more certain aspects of the plot that could be interpreted different ways.

Was Alex just insane or do you think it was free will that made him so violent? The classic conditioning he got while at the medical center, I don't think took away his free will, it's just a form of psychology and isn't effective in the long term-ala him at the hospital in the very end, obviously back to his original self.

DISCUSS DISCUSS

 

[Brendonia]

This is an interesting topic, I've done a lot of research on it actually. From your post I'm taking that you don't know that the movie is based on a book by Charles Burgess of the same name. Read it. Pretty much everything you are asking about will make sense.

The language was created for the book by Burgess. He just starts off with it and you basically have to figure out what the hell he is talking about throughout. It takes a few chapters and a few readthroughs but you figure out what pretty much everything means pretty quickly. I think that is really cool and interesting in and of itself, and I really enjoyed the book more than the movie. I know that the movie ends with Alex in the hospital, but that is not how the book ends. Well it's how the original American edition ends but it is not what was written by Burgess.

In the book, there is a final chapter set a few years later where Alex has a new gang. He's in a bar feeling pretty apathetic about the whole thing when he sees his old "droogies" at the bar and goes up to talk to them. They have all pretty much straightened themselves out (Dim may be dead, I'm not sure cuz I haven't read it in a while) and Alex realizes that he wants that too, to have a family and a real life. I thought that it was affirming that people tend to straighten out as they grow older, but I'm not really sure what Burgess was going with on that one. I did the big research project on it a few years ago and haven't done much work with it since, so if I'm off somebody will definitely let me know, but my advice would be for you to read the book, it's not long and is really very interesting.

If anyone cares my thesis was that the movie perverted the message of the book, don't get me wrong I thought the movie was well done, but there were several changes made that changed the mindset of Alex from the book (the penis statue replacing the Beethoven statue and whatnot).

 

[Hitokage]

Was Alex just insane or do you think it was free will that made him so violent? The classic conditioning he got while at the medical center, I don't think took away his free will, it's just a form of psychology and isn't effective in the long term-ala him at the hospital in the very end, obviously back to his original self.

When I watched it I thought it was saying he found a new muse, as Beethoven was for him originally.

 

[fallout]

Just a note on the language, there was a bunch of Russian in it. I've never read the book, but here are a few examples.

Devochka = girl
Moloko (the bar) = milk
Malchik = boy
Khorosho = good

I don't speak it myself, but my girlfriend does. Some of those aren't the best translations, but it's really just to my best understanding.

 

[8bit]

As Brendonia says, you really should read the book before drawing a final conclusion.

 

[B-B-Bomba!]

Book was given away free with a UK newspaper last year, so your ever humble narrator had to give in to temptation. I never saw the film, but the book (with the full ending, it seems) went down a rare treat, and it truly doesn't take long. The overall message for me, apart from the wider commentary on society, nihilism and fun, was as Brendonia suggests that he simply matured and grew out of his old ways. Now whether that was because of the conditioning he underwent, or because that's simply how people are, is not answered.

The language itself was a joy to unravel; only the Scots dialects employed by Irvine Welsh and Iain Banks have given me more pleasure.