This week's character of the week is the main character in one of my favorite films, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. It is Alex DeLarge, who is played brilliantly by Malcolm McDowell. He is a very interesting character because although he starts out as a villianous troublemaker and ends up a sort of pathetic victim. The film starts out with him and his three droogs beating up old men, attacking people in their homes, and committing many acts of ultraviolence. The second part of the movie is him trying to get out of prison, and eventually doing so by undergoing a new treatment that conditions him to feel sick around acts of violence, and when he hears Beethoven's 9th. You can see how, even though the treatment works and he is no longer able to commit acts of violence, that he still has not changed on the inside.
This is just a brilliant, amazing, sensational film that everyone should be required to watch in their lifetime. It is definitely Malcolm McDowell's best performance, and in my opinion, Kubrick's greatest film. I have never been able to read through the entire book, though. Even though it is quite short, I cannot understand a word because it is all like Russian slang, and I end up getting frustrated and giving up. I am planning to give it another go, however.
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