Well, I attended my first book club meeting last Sunday. Up to this point, I haven’t been able to be a part of the book club, as it was on at the same time as one of our other congregations that I lead. Would you believe it! Despite all my good intentions, I never actually read the book. I did try - I promise. But, when I picked up the book, to read it before I went to sleep I realised something quickly. This book, ‘a Clockwork Orange’ is not one to read when you are tired and want something to tire your eyes. The first couple of pages are filled with these words that are made up. Sure, you can look them up in the glossary at the back, but please - who wants to do that just before you get your zzzz’s.

So, what do you do at a book club when you haven’t read the book? Nod wisely and say Mmm occasionally? Well you could, but I was saved by the fact that we were going to watch the movie. So, we poped in the Stanley Kulbrik movie into the DVD player and sat down and watched.

What a weird movie!

I am sure there are some important themes running through this movie, but seriously Kulbrik seems to be obsessed by sex. There were scenes containing sex even when it didn’t add anything to the story line. I must read the book and find out if sex dominated the book as much as the movie. I can easily see why this movie was banned when it was first released. Even in this new century the extreme violence, full frontal nudity and sex scenes are confronting. All the way through the movie, I was left with the impression I was watching an important movie that had some powerful things to say about contemporary society. It was just that I wasn’t sure exactly what, it was, that it was saying.

The main character Alex is a hoodlum who spends each night tearing up his neighbourhood. He indulges in rape and other violent acts each night. One night he gets caught and ends up in prison. In prison, he befriends the prison chaplain though that curious mix of charisma and violence that some people possess. Through this connection he is able to get into an experimental prisoner rehabilitation program. The program is designed to give violent criminals feelings of nausea, anytime they are tempted to be violent. The do this by showing him graphic images of violence, while holding his eye lids open with clamps and giving him injections that cause the nausea. In time he is announced rehabilitated after passing a humiliating test in front of politicians and other interested ‘civilised’ people. Upon his release, he struggles to rejoin society and is unable to resume his position of power due to the treatment. He becomes the victim and is hounded by former friends. The irony is taken to another level when he is taken in one night by the very man whose wife he raped.

There are many themes running through this book/film about redemption, and forgiveness. However, the one that struck me the hardest was the theme of how we can so easily see people as less than people. Maybe, it is the current political climate in which we are living, but the way Alex was treated by the government resounded strongly with me. It is at our own risk, when we treat our enemies as less than human beings. We expose much of our own evilness when we treat people, who we consider to be evil, as less than human.

A powerful movie and I really must read the book someday

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2003 at 11:00 am by phil and is filed under book of the month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.