put the crack pipe down and step away from the directors chair!!

Quoted: Read the book.

Read (past tense) the book.

The movie's better.

Way better.

"Art" that doesn't suck.  Who'd have thought it possible.

Quoted: Read the book if you really want a challenge.

Look for the version with Anthony Burgess's foreward, that's the newer release that has the missing chapter. The US version was missing the last chapter which changed EVERYTHING. It's what the film was based on. The version found EVERYWHERE else had the last chapter. The recent reissue in the US includes the missing chapter and it's well worth hunting for.

The film seems to glorify random evil gang violence. The last chapter makes sense of it. Oddly enough, they lifted allot of the dialog right from the book.

Quoted: i enjoyed it actually- lots of nekid scenes  but the very ending "yep, I am cured"  (more nekid), was confusing.  How was he cured, why?

He wasn't. They removed conditioning...so in his mind he was cured of the artifical restraints and could return to rape and murder. So we see a rape fantasy at the end as he smiles insanely.

Quoted: Quoted: It's a true classic. Kubric was way ahead of his time. It is interesting to note that the girls at the record store were about 10 years old in the book, and didn't take kindly to Alex's "in and out" attentions. Unlike the randy hyperspeed 3some we see in the  movie. To answer the original poster's question. Alex's fall from the 2nd floor building and subsequent head trauma is what "cured" him and made him the person he once was (we are allowed to assume from his demeanor, since he does no raping and pillaging at the end of the film) with his narcissim, self-absorption and crudeness. I think it is much the same was what is going on here. Youths just packed fulla "self-esteem" which they have not earned through anything except BEING. The social engineers have made it this way. A generation of soulless "feel goods" who seem to expect the best of everything, with the minimum possible investment of themselves. I think it amazing, that this movie was filmed when I was 1 year old, yet there are still some very shocking images in it. I also find it fascinating that Kubric is able to manipulate the audience into feeling pity for this "Clockwork Orange", a natural (supposedly) looking being with mechanical innards. Actually, I still admire Kubric for taking a wonton killer/rapist/thief and making us feel sorry for him. D. AZEX Sorry dude but you are wrong.  Alex's fall did not cure him at all. After his condition was leaked to the press, the polititians had the doctors fix him so they could make political fodder of him. And you aren't supposed to feel sorry for alex. He is an animal. That was not kubricks intention nor the books intention. Zen

Regardless of Kubrick's alleged intention (one of those old Greeks--Socrates perhaps?--observed that artists aren't any better at interpreting their work than anyone else), the reaction that most people with a y-chromosome to the end is to enjoy Alex's recovery.  Whether intentional or not, that is part of the genius of the movie.   We start with a nasty piece of shit, share his viscious exploits, and then his suffering and humiliation, and then his "recovery" and feel sympathy for him.  Who didn't smile when he said "I was cured alright."?  It brilliantly illustrates the manipulative power of film.  

Quoted: Quoted: Read the book if you really want a challenge. Great book!  Be careful if you buy a used copy, most have the glossary of the Nadsat words ripped out.  Without it, it's a pointless read.  Burgess did a hell of a job with that, one of my favorite works of fiction. BTW, the English (Original) and American (Movie Adapted) versions are different.  There is an additional chapter at the end of the English version which shows Alex growing bored with his life of violence and strating to reform himself (Burgess was a devout Catholic).  Kubrick pulled that part out so it would end with Alex returing joyfully to his violent "natural" state, which fit in better with his secular outlook.

The story was about free will. That you are given a gift to do as you please and it's you choice how you live it. It's not that he grows bored with the life, it's just thet its empty.  

Quoted: It predicted alot of trends that are common now: All criminals are poor misunderstood individuals. Self-defense, in England, is more criminal than criminal acts. Random hooking up means nothing. (Alex in the music store) Gangs are more family than family. Kubrik was always just a little ahead of others, and his movies pulled no punches.

The Alex hooking up in the music store was different in the book. You need to consider that in the book he's 14 years old there abouts. The girls are 11 or 12. He lures them back, gets them stoned, and rapes them. The film makes it consentual.

A Clockwork Orange is one of the greatest films EVAR!!!

It was said that Kubrick liked the American version because it was hard. The end was Alex returning to a life of crime and evil. Period. The following isn't my opinion, but the publishers: It was thought by Kubrick that an America going through Vietnam wouldn't believe the moral enlightment at the end of the tunnel found in the original. The transformation would be lost to a cynical America, and and ever cynical Kubrick. The man was a walking downer. Burgess hated the omission. It put an entirely different spin on what he was trying to say. But it was also his most successful book, so what was he going to do?


SPOILER: DON'T READ THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE GOING TO READ THE BOOK.
The book has 3 parts, 6 chapters each part, totaling 18. The last represents the age of maturity, when we are considered adults. It's at that point that Alex, with a new gang, runs into one of his old droogs from the begining of the book. Alex is shocked to meet his mates wife! He's married and is a stand-up citizen. It's after that when Alex has a vision of himself as an old man with grand children bouncing on his knee. He has an urge to create life rather than destroy it. The redemption is that Alex isn't an absolute evil. The point of the book is to illustrate that very point. Judging Alex to be irredeemable is FALSE since he has free will. Chemically conditioning him to alter his (psychotic) brain is FALSE since he hasn't actually changed. Forcing him to be conditioned to be GOOD doesn't change the man.

Their are no moral absolutes. Nothing is pure good or evil. If something was considered to be an absolute it is in fact unnatural....which is the source of the title. An old cockney expression to describe something as being VERY strange or odd was "A clockwork orange." "He's as queer as a clockwork orange he is!" As in a piece of fruit, all the signs of being lush and juicy, but you peel the skin back to expose gears and springs and other mechanical things like that which is found in a clock. That what it appears to be isn't always the truth. There's always more than meets the eye.

Where we find Alex's psychotic behavior repugnant, we feel sympathy for him, we hope he has some good in him...because it's not possible that he's pure evil. Otherwise, if he were, he's be a Clockwork Orange. And eventually, he comes to discover what a waste his youth has been. The killing, rape, the ultra-violence.  

It's a really GREAT book about the FREE WILL blessed upon us by god.