My sabbatical from First Church Unitarian officially started today, and will end May 19. I’m going to carry on with my Stanley Kubrick review, but a few other posts might come in between Kubrick posts. We’ll see!
This, A Clockwork Orange (1971) was the film I was most dreading. I watched this once before in my life, when I was about 20 years old. At that time, I hated this movie. I loathed the main character, Alex DeLarge, and I didn’t care what happened to him. I thought he deserved whatever he got! So rewatching this film, in some sense, I learned more about how I’ve changed in the last 35 years than anything else.
Watching it now, I see the movie’s brilliance. It’s still not fun to watch. And there is much to loathe about Alex DeLarge, but now my worldview is softer and nuanced enough that I do care what happens to him, and I now am able to take in the main points of the film. It’s very visually stylized in a way that is very Kubrick, but it still feels like a comedown to me after 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I enjoyed so much more.
Fool of Spirit 