REAL HORRORSHOW

I invested the last remaining pounds of the voucher I got for doing a little job in a couple of DVDs, the first one, Kubrik's fabulous adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and the second, Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The first of the DVDs, A Clockwork Orange, turned up today, and I have just finished watching it.



I first became aware of the film while growing up, as Orange Mechanique. Well before I knew anything about the film, or the book, I was fascinated by the absurdity of the French title (Mechanical Orange) as much as its strange poetry. The film was available in France and regularly played in a local cinema, and when I turned 18 (it was, of course, given an 18 certificate), I went to see it. I can't say I remembered much of the film, but I remember being impressed by the particular aesthetic developed by Kubrik. I also found it all very dated.



Viddying it again some fifteen years or so later, and having read the book a couple of years ago, I realise how terribly modern and fresh it is now, and how controversial and shocking it must have been back then. I found the book a lot more disturbing though, perhaps because of the non-English words inserted as part of the common language, but most probably because only the limitations of my imagination served as boundaries to the sheer horror of the story.