So this is definitely a Kubrick movie, all mannered and distant and stark and what-not. In theory, this could work well with the “ultraviolence” and government repression thing to be unsettlingly distant, but in fact it mostly just makes it kinda boring and flat. As “classic” movies go, meh.

Interesting things:

  1. So for a movie that’s supposed to be showing incredibly, over-the-top ultraviolence, there’s really not much going on. Some weak-armed beatings are the best they can muster? Conversely, however, there is a lot more nudity in this than you’d get in a modern movie, both plot-related and just incidental. The ‘70s were different, I guess?

  2. Young Malcolm McDowell! Wow, that’s weird. He seems like the kind of guy who’s never been young, only empirically, he was.

  3. They do narration with Burgess’s quasi-English, and I have to say that was one of my favorite parts of it. I don’t think I’m up for reading a whole book written like that, but it’s distinctive and interesting.