A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey

This weekend I continued my studies on Stanley Kubrick by watching his two most famous movies: A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. After watching these two, I can conclude that Kubrick is one strange dude. These two movies were two of the strangest I've ever seen in my life. Alex's transformation from sociopathic punk to brainwashed government servant back to menace of society again in A Clockwork Orange was easily one of the most radical character developments I've ever seen. And the pure scope of Kubrick's vision in 2001 was massive and epic, but not least bit underwhelming.

Kubrick did a fantastic job of portraying Alex as this extremely unlikeable character in the first half of  Clockwork, but by the halfway mark when the government was sticking things in his eyes and he got violently sick at the thought of sex you just couldn't help but feel bad for this guy.This movie has been ranked by many critics as the most controversial movie of all time and that's rightfully so. There's rape scenes, extremely violent action sequences, and it even spawned some copycat crimes in the UK. Its stated in the movie that Alex is a victim of his dystopic, modern, society and I wholeheartedly agree. But not in the sense that he was used as his government's guinea pig for an extremely controversial "cureall" for criminality, instead he is a victim of his society's sex and violence obsession.

The other Kubrick film I watched recently was 2001: A Space Odyssey and this was  a strange one as well. This was the first time I saw this movie and I can definitely see the impact it's had on the film industry. Its this film that pioneered the association of waltz-like classical music with the journey of a space ship. The music all throughout is so iconic, I feel I've seen it parodied and referenced by hundreds of other films. Even people who have never heard of 2001 know that recognizable theme. The overall plot of the movie is fairly convoluted and a bit confusing. After I watched the movie I did some research on the ending because I really had no clue what was going on, and after looking into it, I just got even more confused. I'm not going to pretend that I understood the plot of the film, but one things for sure, it was a damn pretty movie.

I'm going to continue powering through the rest Kubrick's filmography. I just bought Paths of Glory, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, Spartacus, and The Killing to finish out my collection of his films. For some reason they were not included in my Kubrick box collection that I bought a while back. My goal is to be finished with all of Kubrick's films by the end of February and I think I'll be able to achieve that because of this upcoming February break we have.