Analysis of A Clockwork Orange

For my research in to a thriller I watched Stanley Kubrick's, A Clockwork Orange, it is a very different sort of thriller where Kubrick expresses his view of futuristic Britain, the main character in the film is a young man called Alex who causes havoc with his 3 friends in a gang. The storyline follows some of the crimes he has been committing, it follows in to his time in prison and how he copes with it, getting involved with a releasion programme run by a psychologist who says that he can turn a former criminal against there previous views and make them horrified when they see what they have done. He goes through this programme and is released from prison, and comes across the family he traumatised and begins to get his comeupance even though he has been "healed". After trying to commit suicide through being mentally tortured by someone he assaulted before he was in prison. He ends up in hospital and you slowly see the psychologists work being undone and you see Alex not being horrified by seeing his previous crimes.

Looking more closely at the opening sequence, it begins with the credits on simple red and blue backgrounds, in the first shot you see Alex and his gang sitting in a very elaborate milk bar with naked maniquin style tables, the shot zooms out from first looking at Alex's with a smirk (pic below) on his face and then as the camera tracks out you begin to see his surroundings of the milk bar and his friends; Pete, Georgie and Dim sitting with him (pic 2)and the public at other tables.

The scene is mildly psychadelic and not like anything that would normally be seen, this causes suspense mainly because of their atire (white shirt, tight white trousers, bowler hat, one eye with fake eyelashes, and a cod piece) that is abnormal to the audience, especially when the film was first shown (1971). The background music also builds tension, the main instrument used in the background is a Theremin, which produces a very erie sound and matches how psychadelic and mysterious the first shot is along with a drum build up it really .

Alex begins to narrate the beginning of the film and does so throughout, this proves confusion as you are seeing him but also he is narrating it himself, the way he talks also confuses the audience as he does not use normal english and instead uses a slang similar to cockney in which words do not always make direct sense. "I can only be concerned about my own Booky Wook, plus in a matter of fact its a reference from clockwork orange, where he rhymes all sorts of words to make language, which just becomes a white noise, a blur, stand out, so we recognise that we are alive in the moment and don't live in the slue of mediocrity, that at any moment just by being a bit silly that we can puncture pomposity" (Russel Brand - Have I Got News For You)