Ahhh Kubrick... you are missed.
This film has had plenty of ink (real and electronic) spilled about it already, and I’m not going to waste anytime trying to encapsulate the whole thing. Yes, it’s violent. Yes, it’s got the music of Beethoven. Yes, the story explores issues of morality and free will; specifically by examining to what extent and in what ways we must socialize people in order to maintain society. And yes, it introduces us to the Karova Milk Bar... and when we see it we know we’ve never actually been in, and probably never will be in, such an ultra-cool, ultra-hip bar despite all our attempts to find one.
I mean, come on... the milky white naked statues of provocatively posed women... men dressed all in white, with little black hats, and with enormous cod-pieces strapped out-side of their clothes... strange opera singers stopping by for a drink and spontaneously performing arias from Beethoven... random bits of vaguely Slavic text written in bulbous white lettering on dark black walls... some sort of demented drug-laced milk being served directly out of the nipples of the afore-mentioned naked statues... clearly this Karova Bar is way cooler than we are and will always be behind some closely guarded door at an address we will never even know.
But enough of that... what I really want to talk about is the last image of the film. Our hero, Alex, laying in some sort of white sand while fucking a girl wearing nothing but long black gloves and long black stockings with white-lace trimming at the tops. To the left and the right of them stand two rows of men and women dressed in Victorian clothing. What does this mean? A visual representation of the contradictions inherent in our sexual morality codes? Bourgeois hypocrisy confronted with animalistic lust? Glorification of the animal inside of us that can never be truly tamed? Condemnation of sexual brutality that is never truly socialized, no matter how formalized we structure our surface appearances?
The beauty here, from a filmic sense, is the ambiguity... we know the sorts of questions being asked, but we haven’t been force fed an unqualified and absolute answer. Kubrick has cleverly and graphically explored themes of coercion, socialization, and domination through out the film, but by concluding with with this uncertain and intriguing ending he makes sure that (at least in the context of this film) our Free Will remains intact.
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1 comment:
I'll never forget the first time I saw this film. I was fifteen, and it was my introduction to the work of Stanley Kubrick. The experience was traumatizing, stimulating, and sparked a curiosity in substantive film-making that continues to this day.
Beethoven, sex, morality, rape, filial obligation, the English, lower-middle class....all aspects of the thing that are woven together in a manner which forces you to think, not just view. That's the primary achievement of his film making, and this film in particular.
Now I've got to go find my cod-piece.........
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