A Clockwork Orange is a devastatingly brutal and confrontational film. It’s also darkly comical, irreverent, and stylistically brilliant. It’s all the things everyone has said about it, or accused it of, yet impossible to truly describe. You just have to see it for yourself.

The first half of the film, especially the first thirty minutes or so, are so weirdly compelling and horrifying at the same time your brain doesn’t know how to handle it. By the time we get to the scene where Alex rapes a helpless woman in her home while cheerfully belting out ‘Singing in the Rain,’ we know that anything is possible in this film, and its sense of absurd possibility makes us laugh, even though we’re watching something utterly brutal and sadistic.

There is a slight drop-off in the second half of the film, perhaps necessarily so. The film doesn’t work as any kind of effective parable against government subjugation, or even as a discussion about free will and moral goodness, which at least on the surface the film seems to about. No, the curious (and perhaps most amazing) thing about the film is that it completely escapes any attempts to corner it: Kubrick does not condemn or condone anything we see on screen. Alex’s crimes are horrific, but so are the state’s attempts to psychologically modify his behavior. No one’s actions are advocated here. There is a very conscious attempt to avoid giving a ‘message,’ which is remarkable given its loaded themes and content.

Then what is Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange? It’s a movie of images, images that have become iconic now in our film history: Alex’s eyelashes and psychopathic stare, the beating of the homeless man inside the tunnel, the eyelid hooks during the aversion therapy. It’s about visual seduction in the face of depravity and moral ambiguity. And Kubrick buttresses those images with a largely classical and electronically synthesized score that provides a counterpoint to the shocking things we see on screen. Constantly Kubrick is pushing our buttons, manipulating our reactions, and getting us to examine our own feelings toward what we’re seeing. The true focus of A Clockwork Orange is us - which is why it beings with a closeup of Alex staring unblinkingly into the camera as it pans back, as if to challenge us to see who’ll blink first.

It’s unlikely that I have anything new to add to the accolades and lavish praise this film has received since its reception. Besides, I’ve only seen this film once and I suspect that I’ll need at least several more viewings to completely unpack its brilliance. So I’ll just give you some initial impressions.

A lot of people have noted the way Fellini utterly exposes the shallowness that lies beneath the glitzy decadence of this jet-set life in 60s Rome, but he doesn’t go easy on the alternative, either. That being a domesticated life, here embodied in the desires of Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend Emma. While Marcello is clearly an unfaithful jerk to her, Emma is not flatteringly portrayed, either. Rather, she comes off shrill and needy, and an ominous warning to Marcello of the dangers of a domesticated life. It’s in the car during his argument with her that we finally get a clear articulation of his fears of commitment and family that are lurking quietly up until now. He says to her, memorably, that “a man who agrees to live like this is a finished man, he’s nothing but a worm!” He denies that such life is a borne of love; rather it is a kind of “brutalization.” And later, of course, we find that the one domesticated man that Marcello actually admired has killed his children and committed suicide, apparently out of the kind of despair that Marcello himself harbored.

I admire Fellini for not taking the easy route, which would have been to simply condemn the empty lifestyles of the rich and famous. In fact, he keys onto something essential in the heart of a man, I believe, which is his ambition. I have always believed that there are two kinds of men: family men, and the men who are not family men. The former can be satisfied in the work of raising a family, and indeed they exist to do so, and it comprises the entirety of their ambition in life. The latter cannot. There’s nothing wrong with being a family man, of course, it’s a noble life goal, and not easy by any means. But there are men who simply cannot be satiated with raising a family. They must leave their mark on the world in other ways besides their progeny.

The irony in Fellini’s depiction of the decadent jet-set crowd that Marcello hangs around with is that even as he criticizes it for its lavish emptiness, you can’t help but be seduced by it. In fact, it helps you understand why Marcello is himself sucked into that world, even while he’s skeptical of it. I imagine that people will watch this film and completely miss or ignore the commentary that Fellini is making about this sort of life and instead become enthralled by its glamour and free-wheeling attitude. Speaking for myself, I know that the setting alone conjured up my own memories of Rome and its absolutely ruinous beauty. I mean, just take a look at that screenshot above of Marcello and Anita Eckberg knee-deep in the Trevi Fountain. It’s ridiculous how perfect it is.