"I was cured, all right!" A Clockwork Orange is a dark and twisted movie the whole way through, filled with moral quandaries and finished off with a purposefully ambiguous ending. Alex is a violent young man, one who engages in rape and murder without a second thought. But all that changes when he becomes part of an experimental rehabilitation program that conditions him to be physically ill at the sight of violence. This concept makes viewers incredibly uneasy - we want people to follow the laws, but there's something that just doesn't feel right about taking a criminal and torturing him until he's incapable of doing ill. At the end of the film, we see Alex engaging in an extravagant sexual fantasy, while he proclaims that he was cured. There is so much left open to interpretation in this final scene, especially considering the fact that the novel's much more straightforward epilogue hadn't been released in America at the time the film was made.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
