As it turns out, calling 2001 a more optimistic view of the future may be a misnomer. That jump-cut from the Dawn of Man to the docking sequence in the space station begins with an edit from the bone thrown into the air to a satellite, explained in the text of the script to be a nuclear platform. Indeed in 2001 several scenes depict tensions between America and Russia, and while it is downplayed, it's still palpable. The script goes into much greater detail about this and I think part of the reason the narration which describes these tensions was excised was that the preference was to focus on the optimism for the advancement of humanity.
It is also important to keep in mind that the previous film to 2001 was, of course, Dr. Strangelove. To be sure Kubrick did not want to overlap subject matter, preferring to make each picture its own distinct statement.
And realizing this approach on the part of the director helps to understand why we have two movies back-to-back which cast an eye to the future, but which have vastly different outlooks.
Granted, aside from The Dawn of Man segment, not a single scene in 2001 occurs on Earth. Every segment takes place on the space station, the moon, or the Jupiter I mission. So we don't get a feel for what conditions are like planetside.
Meanwhile the view of British society in A Clockwork Orange (which takes place in 1997, incidentally) is that of urban sprawl and decay; everyone complains about the lack of law and order, and when the government does undertake to address issues like overcrowding in prisons their approach is to make easy fixes - employing a Pavlovian technique to make the worst offenders averse to violence, but also enlisting ruffians and hoodlums who are caught for lesser, more petty crimes, such as Alex's old droogs (friends, in his made-up parlance), as police officers.
Even those who purport to help Alex once he has been spit out of the meat grinder of the prison system, victimize the boy and use him to make political gains just as he victimized them.
The second half of the film is concerned with the ghosts of Alex's past coming back to haunt him; the old man he beat to within an inch of his life in the first scene, followed by the revelation of Dim as a police officer, and then finally delivered into the hands of the writer whose wife he and his crew had raped, and is now himself wheelchair-bound.
In many ways the punishment that Alex receives is disproportionate to his own transgressions. To be sure the writer whom he assaulted would certainly be expected to have an adverse reaction to realizing just exactly who Alex was, but to kidnap him, subject him to Beethoven's Ninth (which as a side effect of the conditioning is just as painful to him as thoughts of sex and violence) and cause him to nearly commit suicide seems an overly cruel retribution, even if his wife did kill herself due to the brutality of Alex's rape and assault.
And then we learn that the writer is himself taken by Britain as a political prisoner, which highlights the cycle of violence and the dangers of having the state be involved in "curing" aberrant behavior. The book does end with Alex coming to a personal decision to become a moral, upstanding citizen. But the reason to end the film where it did was twofold: firstly Kubrick had only read the American version of the novel, which drops the final chapter and ends instead with the conditioning technique wearing off and Alex resuming his anti-social ways. The second reason is that this ending hammers home the point of the main theme which is that the choice to be good and moral is just that - a choice. It cannot be forced upon a person by conditioning.
I do not believe A Clockwork Orange would have had the cultural impact it did had the original ending of the book been employed. Writer Anthony Burgess was understandably disappointed by the film, stating that it lacked the lessons of his novel. But I think his judgement was clouded and he was unable to see the merit of the Kubrick ending which makes an excellent point about the human soul.
Both artistic visions have merit - Burgess' ending speaks to the ability of humanity to rise above one's circumstances, while Kubrick' s ending speaks to the inability of outside forces to control the human spirit, that its inherent traits, whether for good or ill, will always re-emerge no matter what the outside factors.
Both are squarely aimed, ultimately, at showing that choice must be a factor in a person's development. Removing choice - whether it's the choice to do evil or otherwise - also removes the individual's ability to defend one's self, as well as to grow, develop, and change. Alex, once dropped back into society, is in a state of stasis due to the Ludovico Technique. While he cannot perform acts of sex and violence he also cannot choose not to and so cannot truly grow. That, then, is the ultimate tragedy of Alex DeLarge.
It is also important to keep in mind that the previous film to 2001 was, of course, Dr. Strangelove. To be sure Kubrick did not want to overlap subject matter, preferring to make each picture its own distinct statement.
And realizing this approach on the part of the director helps to understand why we have two movies back-to-back which cast an eye to the future, but which have vastly different outlooks.
Granted, aside from The Dawn of Man segment, not a single scene in 2001 occurs on Earth. Every segment takes place on the space station, the moon, or the Jupiter I mission. So we don't get a feel for what conditions are like planetside.
Meanwhile the view of British society in A Clockwork Orange (which takes place in 1997, incidentally) is that of urban sprawl and decay; everyone complains about the lack of law and order, and when the government does undertake to address issues like overcrowding in prisons their approach is to make easy fixes - employing a Pavlovian technique to make the worst offenders averse to violence, but also enlisting ruffians and hoodlums who are caught for lesser, more petty crimes, such as Alex's old droogs (friends, in his made-up parlance), as police officers.
Even those who purport to help Alex once he has been spit out of the meat grinder of the prison system, victimize the boy and use him to make political gains just as he victimized them.
The second half of the film is concerned with the ghosts of Alex's past coming back to haunt him; the old man he beat to within an inch of his life in the first scene, followed by the revelation of Dim as a police officer, and then finally delivered into the hands of the writer whose wife he and his crew had raped, and is now himself wheelchair-bound.
In many ways the punishment that Alex receives is disproportionate to his own transgressions. To be sure the writer whom he assaulted would certainly be expected to have an adverse reaction to realizing just exactly who Alex was, but to kidnap him, subject him to Beethoven's Ninth (which as a side effect of the conditioning is just as painful to him as thoughts of sex and violence) and cause him to nearly commit suicide seems an overly cruel retribution, even if his wife did kill herself due to the brutality of Alex's rape and assault.
And then we learn that the writer is himself taken by Britain as a political prisoner, which highlights the cycle of violence and the dangers of having the state be involved in "curing" aberrant behavior. The book does end with Alex coming to a personal decision to become a moral, upstanding citizen. But the reason to end the film where it did was twofold: firstly Kubrick had only read the American version of the novel, which drops the final chapter and ends instead with the conditioning technique wearing off and Alex resuming his anti-social ways. The second reason is that this ending hammers home the point of the main theme which is that the choice to be good and moral is just that - a choice. It cannot be forced upon a person by conditioning.
I do not believe A Clockwork Orange would have had the cultural impact it did had the original ending of the book been employed. Writer Anthony Burgess was understandably disappointed by the film, stating that it lacked the lessons of his novel. But I think his judgement was clouded and he was unable to see the merit of the Kubrick ending which makes an excellent point about the human soul.
Both artistic visions have merit - Burgess' ending speaks to the ability of humanity to rise above one's circumstances, while Kubrick' s ending speaks to the inability of outside forces to control the human spirit, that its inherent traits, whether for good or ill, will always re-emerge no matter what the outside factors.
Both are squarely aimed, ultimately, at showing that choice must be a factor in a person's development. Removing choice - whether it's the choice to do evil or otherwise - also removes the individual's ability to defend one's self, as well as to grow, develop, and change. Alex, once dropped back into society, is in a state of stasis due to the Ludovico Technique. While he cannot perform acts of sex and violence he also cannot choose not to and so cannot truly grow. That, then, is the ultimate tragedy of Alex DeLarge.
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