STANLEY KUBRICK'S A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Go to TOC for this film ( (which has also a statement on purpose and manner of analysis and a disclaimer as to caveat emptor and my knowing anything authoritatively, which I do not, but I do try to not know earnestly, with some discretion, and considerable thought).
PART SEVEN
TOC and Supplemental Posts | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Films Home
LINKS TO SECTIONS OF THE ANALYSIS ON THIS PAGE:
The Near Drowning of Alex, Shots 529 through 534
On the symbolic versus literalism. 114 and its permutations in the timeline of the film, Alex's drowning during 1:41 and its connection with the mention of the feeling of drowning during 1:14.
The Return to HOME, Shots 535 through 550
On the bodybuilder.
Singing in the Rain Redux, Shots 551 through 554
Spaghetti and Wine for Alex, Shots 555 through 588
Alex Takes a Flying Leap, Shots 589 through 595
A comparison of the inspiration for Alex's suicidal leap with the programming Alex receives in the book. Ode to Joy as a death song. The suicide scherzo, Alex's leap and the dancing Christs. The Divine Edgar.
THE NEAR DROWNING OF ALEX
ON THE SYMBOLIC VERSUS LITERALISM - 114 AND ITS PERMUTATIONS IN THE TIMELINE OF THE FILM, ALEX'S DROWNING DURING 1:41 AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE MENTION OF THE FEELING OF DROWNING DURING 1:14
The "Funeral March for Queen Mary" plays.
529 LS An isolated, countryside road that is wet with rain, a police van traveling toward the camera. (1:39:27) A white police Land Rover, license plate XPE 283Q drives up to and passes the camera, the camera panning to the left to follow. The Land Rover stops beside two concrete poles, a red sign on the top flashing alternately "Divert >" and "Stop". We hear Dim's cackling laughter as he opens the driver's door and climbs out.
DIM: Come on, Alex. Come for walking.
Dim begins to pull Alex from the Land Rover.
530 MS Dim pulling a handcuffed Alex out of the rear of the van, Georgia Boy following. (1:39:42) Georgie Boy takes Alex by the right arm, screen left, and Dim takes a left arm, and they propel Alex between the concrete poles down a trail--one obviously well known to them--as he hacks and coughs, choking on his nausea, Dim cackling all the while.
Shot 529 | Shot 530 |
 |  |
531 MS Dim, Alex and Georgie Boy from the rear, walking into the orange light of the setting sun. (1:39:50)
ALEX: Come, come, come, my little droogies. I just don't get this at all. The old days are dead and gone. For what I did in the past, I've been punished.
DIM: Punished...
ALEX: I've been cured!
DIM: Cured, yeah! That was read out to us. The Inspector read it all out to us. He said it was a very good way.
ALEX: But what is all this? It was them that went for me, brothers. You're not on their side, and can't be. Well, you can't be, Dim. It was someone we fillied with back in the old days, trying to get is own little bit of revenge after all this time. Remember, Dim?
DIM: Long time is right. I don't remember them days, too horrorshow. And don't call me Dim no more either! Officer, call me!
GEORGIE BOY: Enough is remembered, though, Little Alex.
DIM: This is just to make sure you stay cured!
Commenter Yoyonovich remarked that she sees a resemblance between Georgie Boy and Dim leading Alex to the trough and the two models in Eyes Wide Shut inviting Bill to go to where the rainbow ends. A correspondence between the two pair had never struck me before but when I came back to check out this scene I saw where we have a couple of very strong rainbow lens flare effects. She's right.
532 LS Dim and Georgie Boy leading Alex down the path to a large water trough where it forks. (1:40:45)
Alex, seeing the trough, begins to attempt to brace his feet, struggling and crying out.
ALEX: No, no!
As they reach the trough, Georgie Boy lets Alex go to take out his baton and whack Alex in the stomach with it, which double Alex over and drops him to his knees so they may readily dunk him. Grabbing Alex by the back of the neck, Dim forces Alex's head into the overflowing trough at 1:40:58. Georgie Boy whacks him with his baton, the music providing the sound effect.
533 LS Alex being dunked from the side. (1:41:03) Georgie Boy whacks Alex again, the synth accentuating sharp and echoy with each strike. Then again in the stomach. Again. Then on the back. On the arm. On the back. On the side. Alex has struggled vigorously, head underwater, this entire time, but now his struggle begins to abate. Georgie Boy strikes his side again, his arm, the side of his leg, his back, his side, his arm. At 1:41:41, Georgie Boy stands back.
GEORGIE BOY (to Dim): Had enough, Droogie.
DIM: A bit more!!
Dim, gleefully grunting, keeps Alex's head submerged in the trough while Georgie Boy takes out the key and unlocks the handcuffs.
Alex had stared at the waters of the river, perhaps contemplating suicide and now here he is unwillingly submerged and struggling. One waits and waits for Alex to be pulled back up, certain that he's almost drowned.
Alex's hands released, he flails as Dim pulls him out of the brown waters of the trough.
DIM: Cured, are ya?! Be viddying you some more some time, droogie!
Dim and Georgie Boy, laughing, turn and walk off down the path as Alex falls to the side of the trough, gasping for air.
Shot 532 | Shot 533 |
 |  |
Shot 534 | |
 | |
534 Lightning bolt in a dark sky of roiling cloud. And another! (1:42:19)
LIGHTNING! Perfect comic timing, this shot now of rolling cloud and storm.
This episode is different in Burgess' book. Here, Alex is taken out to the countryside and suffers nearly being drowned, while in the book he was instead severely beaten. Though the "Funeral March for Queen Mary" plays as Alex is led by his former droogs into the light of the setting sun, because this the only time the sun is shown in the movie, I would consider this scene to have a connection to the "Overture to the Sun" which was played while Alex was abused on the stage.
At the end of his book, Burgess relegated all Alex's actions to nature, and that son after son after son would commit the same violence and nothing would deter except, eventually, maturity. Perhaps, as he was Catholic, he subscribed to man being a fallen creature enthrall of violence from birth.
So, we have the sun, the son, and we could expand upon and postulate at length on this but I'm more curious at this point as to why Alex is dunked and it being reiterated several times by his droogies on this having to do with his cure, which takes us back to the agent of the cure, CRM-114 or Serum-114, which we've also observed permuted as 141.
I go back to the scene in which we see the vial of serum-114, and the gleam halo of light that is observed over the needle as it is pierced into the rubber head of the vial and its fluid, which is then injected into Alex. This may sound absurd but I look then at Alex and his head being here inserted into the water. It seems there may be a connection, but it seems a very loose and absurd connection. Then I realize that Alex is dunked at 1:40:58 and his head exits the water at 1:42, which means his head is in the water through the entirety of 1:41. And what if we go back to 1:14? He is in the Ludovico cinema and Dr. Brodsky is saying, "One of our earlier test subjects described it as being like death, a sense of stifling or drowning, and it is during this period we've found the subject will make his most rewarding associations between his catastrophic experience, environment, and the violence he sees." We are still in 1:14 when we observe Alex back in his room with Dr. Branom and she herself comments during that time, "You have to be cured."
Not looking for other permutations, but glancing back at Job for what it has to say on Leviathan, I am reminded that it is the 41st chapter, 41:1 beginning, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? Or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down?" Curiously, "down" here is shaqa, "to subside; by implication, to be overflowed, ease; causatively, to abate, subdue--make deep, let down, drown, quench, sink." From this word comes shoqeth, a watering trough. So it is a little interesting that we have here Alex being dunked in the watering trough, yet despite being immersed a full minute and beaten meanwhile, he doesn't drown.
THE RETURN TO HOME
ON THE BODYBUILDER
535 LS Through pouring rain, the illuminated HOME sign alongside a country drive. (1:42:20) It's the same drive to the country home of the writer and his wife that Alex and his droogs had assaulted at the film's beginning.
ALEX (VO): Where was I to go, who had no home and no money?
Alex stumbles through the pouring rain toward the security pillars beside the HOME sign from the same direction as had come the Durango 95. The two globe lamps alongside the gate stream stream into the rain.
ALEX (VO): I cried for meself, home, home, home. It was home I was wanting.
536 LS The writer's home. (1:42:37)
Cut to a shot of the lit up modern home, the same as when Alex and his droogs had crept up on it earlier in the film, but now the rain pours hard.
ALEX (VO): And it was home I came to, brothers, not realizing, in the state I was in, where I was...
537 MS Alex stumbling through the rain and flooded yard to the house. (1:42:45)
ALEX (VO): ...and had been before.
Crash of thunder, Queen Mary's funeral music continuing. Alex stumbles and falls as he approaches the house, crawls over the bridge of the small creek before the house, groping through the deluge toward the bright windows.
538 MS Alexander at his desk, typing. (1:43:21)
We have a replay of the earlier scene, towards the film's beginning, when we first viewed Alexander at his desk, typing away at a red typewriter. Now it is a light blue or gray typewriter. The "Mirror" and other papers sit alongside, their headlines all to do with the freeing of Alex, the Cat-Woman killer.
The writer is dressed almost entirely in orange with a gold shawl about his neck, so that he numbers among the others in orange who had victimized Alex, one of the Clockwork Orange humans who operate by mechanical law rather than independent thought.
If you're familiar with The Shining, the change of color of the typewriter may remind you of Jack's typewriter also changing color to gray after his playing handball led him to examine the maze.
Thunder! We realize there is a heavy breathing off screen, reminding of Frank Poole's breathing in 2001 as he went out to change the Alpha-Echo unit, as well the heavy breathing of Bowman in his astronaut's suit as he faced himself in the room at the edge of eternity.
A bell rings.
ALEXANDER: Who on earth could that be?
The writer asks "Who on earth could that be?" just as he had asked his wife, "Who on earth can that be?" Thunder booming, the camera panning to the right we see he's in a wheelchair. Apparently he was critically injured during the attack by the droogs, though in the attack scene he retained movement of his lower limbs after his fall down the steps.
The doorbell rings again, the first four notes of Beethoven's fifth, which was the symphony playing over the film in the Ludovico cinema in Burgess' book, rather than Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". The heavy breathing is caused by a body builder in a purple tie-dyed tank shirt and red short trunks lifting weights. He rests on apparatus in the same place as had been the white pod in which Alexander's wife had rested, reading, reminding both of her and the cat woman health farm with its exercise equipment. Very little else in the apartment appears to be changed, except there is a large mirror located on the screen right wall there and there hadn't been one before, and one of the two lobes of the red pod seating on the upper level is now missing.
The bell rings again.
JULIAN: I'll see who it is.
This bodybuilder is not in the book. A bit later Alexander will refer to his wife, but rather than remorsing his loss of her as for one he had loved, he will say of her that she had done everything for him. The bodybuilder has in this way replaced the wife, an individual who not only cares for Alexander physically but serves as a kind of replacement body for him. He also reminds of the more minor bodybuilder who had replaced Alex as a son to his parents.
The bodybuilder in his short red trunks rises and climbs the stairs to open the door, giving ample time for us to admire his glutes. Perhaps there is some homoerotica involved but as Kubrick has perhaps subtext concerning Leviathan, via the mural, I am more drawn to the mythic astronomical strongman as Hercules who subdues Draco with his heel upon his head. However, we do have the hint of a marriage of sorts.
The first act of the infant Hercules is to destroy...the pernicious snakes, detested of the gods; his prowess is repeatedly directed against hydras and dragons...But the serpent is beneficent as well as baleful; for the destruction of one era is the commencement of another. The great destroyer of snakes is therefore occasionally married to them... (Source: "The Progress of the Intellect" by Robert William Mackay")
The bodybuilder as the mate of Alexander fits in with his replacing the wife, and also with Alexander being linked with Alex as a father figure.
539 The entry foyer with its checkered floor. (1:44:02)
The bell rings again as the bodybuilder enters the foyer, thunder roiling.
JULIAN: Yes, what is it?
Having no answer, the body builder unlocks and opens the door. Thunder crashes as Alex spills in, his blood smearing the floor.
ALEX: Please, help me.
The bodybuilder picks up the watersodden Alex easily, shutting the door behind him with his foot (more thunder) and carries him back down the foyer.
540 3/4 view of Alexander at his desk. (1:44:24)
Alexander rolls away from his desk into the sitting area as the bodybuilder enters with Alex and carries him down the stairs. Alex has already been associated with Alexander and this action further connects them, for later Julian will carry Alexander down the stairs in his wheelchair.
JULIAN: Frank, I think this young man needs some help.
The body builder stands before Frank, his pelvis thrust forward to counter the weight of Alex. Blood streaming from his nose, Alex lifts his head and looks down at the writer.
ALEXANDER: My god...
541 CU Alexander. (1:44:44)
ALEXANDER: What's happened to you, my boy?
542 CU Alex. (1:44:47)
ALEX (VO): And would you believe it, oh, my brothers and only friends, there was your faithful narrator, being held helpless like a babe in arms (he looks to the body builder and back to Alexander)...
543 LS Side view from screen right of Alexander looking on as Alex is held by the body builder. (1:44:59)
ALEX (VO): ...and suddenly realizing where he was and why home on the gate had looked so familiar.
544 CU Alexander. (1:45:04)
ALEX (VO): But I knew I was safe. I knew he would not remember me, for in those carefree days, I and my so called droogs wore our maskies, which were like real horror show disguises.
545 CU Alex. (1:45:17)
One could look upon Alex's blood stained face as more of a horror show disguise than the mask he wore during the home invasion.
The babe in arms, just as the bodybuilder is only in Kubrick's movie, is a description Alex gives of his situation that is only in the movie. A babe in arms suggests a family dynamic. HOME. The bodybuilder as Alexander's wife, and Alex as his son. But there is much that is given as being similar between Alex and Alexander, and has been from the film's beginning. Just as the bodybuilder carries the helpless Alex down the stairs, so he will later carry Alexander down the stairs to sit with the dining Alex who will be wearing Alexander's robe.
ALEX: Police. The...
546 CU ALEXANDER. (1:45:23)
ALEX: ...ghastly, horrible police.
Thunder!
ALEX: They beat me up, sir. The police beat me up, sir!
The writer stares overlong at him and the audience suspects and Alex suspects he may be remembering him. Instead, Alexander is realizing that Alex is the one who is the subject of the papers.
ALEXANDER: I know you!
547 CU Alex. (1:45:40)
Alex fears he has been recognized.
548 CU Alexander. (1:45:43)
ALEXANDER: Isn't it your picture in the newspapers? Didn't I see you on the video this morning? Are you not the poor victim of this horrible new technique?
Thunder!
ALEX: Yes, sir. That's exactly who and what I am, sir! A victim, sir!
The writer brims with a fevered sort of excitement, shaking.
ALEXANDER: By god you've been sent here by providence, tortured in prison then thrown out to be tortured by the police. My heart goes out to you, poor, poor boy. Oh, you are not the first to come here in distress. The police are fond of bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village. But it is providential that you, who are also another kind of victim, should come here. Oh, but you're cold and shivering. Julian, draw a bath for this young man.
549 LS of Alexander and the body builder holding Alex.
JULIAN: Certainly, Frank.
ALEX: Thank you very much, sir...
Shot 541 | Shot 542 |
 |  |
Shot 543 | Shot 544 |
 |  |
Shot 545 | Shot 546 |
 |  |
Shot 547 | Shot 548 |
 |  |
Shot 549 | Shot 550 |
 |  |
550 CU of Alexander. 1:46:30)
ALEX: God bless you, sir!
Thunder crash!
Julian carrying Alex away, back up the stairs, obviously the writer has plans of his own, barely able to contain himself.
SINGING IN THE RAIN REDUX
551 LS Alex in his bath. (1:46:42)
The bathroom. We view Alex in the tub next a mirrored wall which doubles him and the tub. Above is head is one of the large theatrical bulbs and a porthole style mirror. The mirror shows also, hanging on the door, the red and white bathrobe that the writer had worn during Alex's first visit. Alex has a blue washcloth over his face. He begins humming "Singing in the Rain" then eventually begins to sing.
ALEX: I'm singing in the rain, I'm singing in the rain...
552 MS Side view of the desk and the door beyond, Alexander in his wheelchair behind the desk. (1:47:26)
ALEXANDER: This can be the most potent weapon imaginable to ensure that the government does not return in the forthcoming election. The government's big boast, as you know, sir, is the way they have dealt with crime during the last few months, recruiting brutal young roughs into the police, proposing dehabilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we've seen it all before in other countries, the thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism.
A buzzing over the phone as the individual with whom he's speaking replies. The writer's attention is drawn to the bathroom briefly, he searing the singing, but returns to the phone.
ALEXANDER: This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people, must know, must see. There are rare traditions of liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty is all. The common people will let it go, oh, yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed...
The buzzing over the phone of whomever he is speaking to, replying.
ALEX (singing): ...a happy refrain...I'm singing in the rain...
ALEXANDER (glancing at his watch): Fine. Oh, thank you very much. He'll be here.
The writer isn't wrong. We've observed in the film what he's talking about. Drugged conditioning has been used on an individual who didn't know the particulars of the experimental technique being used on him. We've seen Alex's former droogs who are now police. So the writer here may be speaking about personal liberty and choice, he's not wrong, but he would push the common people into it.
Hanging up, the writer sits back and listens. It's now that we're able to see that the orange globe and the theatrical bulb lamp are no longer on the shelves behind him, replaced with books.
Louder and louder, we hear Alex singing.
ALEX: I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain. What a glorious feeling, I'm ha-ha-happy again. I'm laughing at clouds, so dark up above, the sun's in my heart, and I'm ready for love.
The writer listening, pulls now his wheelchair to the door of the bath.
553 MS Alex in his bath. (1:49:03)
Cut to Alex in his bath finally splashing and nearly dancing in the bath.
ALEX: Let the storm clouds chase everyone from the place, come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face. I walk...
Alex's bath does occur in the novel, but the song, of course, does not.
554 MCU viewing the writer's face from below. (1:49:18)
Cut to the wild expression of the trembling writer, eyes rolled back, Alex's voice echoing loud in our ears, he realizing Alex is the one who had assaulted him a couple of years prior.
ALEX: ...in the rain, to a happy refrain, and I'm singing in...
One of the books on the shelves (one of the few books I can make out and is prominent) happens to be Elie Wiesel's The Jews of Silence, the subject of which is the holocaust and the necessity of survivors not remaining silent but speaking of their experience. We see the book as we observe Alexander gagging, his facial expression recalling when he was bound and gagged at the beginning of the film and unable to speak because of the gag.
David Patterson, writing on Weisel in Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought describes different types of silences: "while sheket means silence, hush, quiet, or calm and implies a certain peacefulness, shatkan is more like an imposed silence. The latter's cognate shitek, for instance, means to silence, as well as to paralyze." And he goes on to give an instance of this in one of Wiesel's novels.
SPAGHETTI AND WINE FOR ALEX
555 LS The sitting area transformed into a dining area. (1:49:30)
Cut to Alex now in the writer's red and white bathrobe, sitting at a dining table in the living area, eating spaghetti, a bottle of wine to the side. The rooms to the left have been shut off, their doors slid shut and the design is such that the doors are as sliding walls presenting closed rooms. The mirror above the body builder's exercise station, in a number of following scenes, is shot in such a way that it appears to be an open door, so we have a kind of partial reversal here of the layout of the house via that mirror and these closed doors/walls.
Julian enters from the rear with the writer, carrying him down the steps in his wheelchair. Alex stands to thank them for leaving out the food.
ALEX: Good evening, sir!
ALEXANDER: Good evening.
ALEX: It was very kind of you, sir, to leave this out for me. Was no one around when I finished me bath, so I started. Hope that's all right, sir.
Julian sets the writer down to Alex's right (screen left).
ALEXANDER: Well, of course.
Julian takes a seat to the left. He wears a short sleeved coral-pink shirt that displays his large muscular arms.
556 The dining area, 3/4 view from screen left. (1:50:27)
Alex continues to eat, slowly becoming self conscious.
557 MS Alexander and Alex from behind the body builder's left shoulder. (1:50:45)
ALEXANDER (screams): Food, all right?
ALEX: Great, sir. Great.
ALEXANDER (uncorking the bottle of wine and pouring it): Try the wine.
558 MS The wine glass from behind the right side of the writer as he pours.
The shot of the wine glass is as of the wineglass in 2001 that Dave Bowman had accidentally knocked off the table.
ALEX: Thank you, sir.
Nervous, Alex takes the wine.
ALEX (to the body builder): Cheers. (To Alexander.) Happy days.
Sensing something is up, suspicious, he sniffs the wine.
559 CU Alexander. (1:51:18)
560 MCU Julian. (1:51:20)
561 Alexander and Alex from the left of the body builder. (1:51:22)
ALEX (to the body builder and Alexander): Won't you join me?
ALEXANDER: No! My health doesn't allow it!
JULIAN: No, thank you.
Alex reads the bottle.
ALEX: 1960 Chateau. Saint Estephe. Adock (?) Very good brand, sir.
Estephe, otherwise known as Chateau Montrose.
562 Alex and Julian from the right of Alexander. (1:51:46)
Alex holds it up to examine the color, stalling.
Shot 556 | Shot 557 |
 |  |
Shot 558 | Shot 559 |
 |  |
Shot 560 | Shot 561 |
 |  |
Shot 562 | Shot 563 |
 |  |
563 Alexander and Alex from the left of Julian. (1:51:51)
ALEX: Very good color, sir. Smells nice, too.
To understand more about the wine symbolism we need to return to Alex's entry into the Ludovico facility and a poster that was observed there which read "Blood Poisoning Kills".
When looked at from the right, Julian's side, the wine is bright red, kool aid red. When looked at from the left, Alexander's side, the wine is a deep wine red. This may not be a simple matter of light but an effect that is planned, considering the movie begins with the deep blood red screen, then after a blue screen we have a hotter, brighter red, such as the kool aid red.
When Alex is undergoing the treatment which will make him incapable of committing violence, one of the films he is shown is of a gang of actor droogs attacking a man. During this, on a brick wall behind the gang we observe the word NOE. NO is in a bright red color while E is in a darker red. There is no reason for this and we can assume that these two shades of red appearing in one word has to do with the film's opening in which we see the two different shades of red. While this word is on the screen, Alex is saying, "...our dear old friend the red vino on tap, the same in all places, like it was put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen." As close as we come to this passage in the book, is to combine two parts. The first is the scene when the droogs are attacking the writer and his wife at HOME, Alex tearing up the writer's A Clockwork Orange manuscript.
Then I started to tear up the sheets and scatter the bits over the floor...So that was old Dim's cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for this veck's dithering rot, crack, crack, first left fistie then right, so that our dear old droog the red--red vino on tap and the same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm--started to pour and spot the nice clean carpet and the bits of his book that I was still ripping away at, razrez razrez...
The second scene occurs in the book while Alex is watching the films.
...and the krovvy flowed beautiful red. It's funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.
Bear with me while I take a look at the two shades of red, for Kubrick employees these two reds in his other films in scenes that seem very particular about these two reds in contrast to one another.
The audience will see NOE and imagine, observing that the NO is in a bright red, that Alex is also subliminally being fed "NO" as an aversion to the violence on the screen. I think that is there, yes, on one level, but I think there is also some word play had in the NOE. Because of Kubrick combining material from the HOME invasion with when Alex is viewing the film doing his aversion treatment, we could possibly also have the Hebrew NVH or NH (in gematria, the Hebrew H in unorthodox gematria is sometimes rendered in English as E, and E does have the value of 5, just as does the Hebrew H). NVH, in Hebrew is "home", and also "to rest (as at home); causatively (through the implied idea of beauty...) to celebrate..." We find it in Exodus used for the idea of a holy habitation for god. The Hebrew NH means "beautiful" and "to be at home".
The English name "Noe" is actually a patronymic form of Noah, the patriarch of the flood, Noah meaning to rest, settle down, and so we see here too a relationship with home as in settling down.
The bright color of red is viewed in the first HOME scene, most notably with the wife wearing a bright red jumpsuit and shoes. Alex several times compares blood to vino, wine, but at no place in the film does blood have the color of wine, it is always an unnaturally brilliant red. Wine shades are reserved for other things and often happen in conjunction with the brighter red. This second time Alex is at HOME, he is given a meal to dine upon, including a bottle of wine and it keeps changing its shade of color. Seen from beside Alexander it has a deep wine color. Seen from beside Alex it has the cartoonish color of kool aid. These alternate perspectives on the color do seem purposeful and I could see several ways of explaining it. A most basic explanation would be that one stands for the unnaturally bright film blood and the other stands for the wine, which is the color of blood, and takes the place of blood in the sacrament.
My theory is that Alex is linked with Leviathan. As I've stated previously, the red of the crimson-grub can be associated with Leviathan, but so is another red, that of a specific kind of wine.
In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.
That wine is chemer from the root chamar. I read it is both a blessing and a curse. As the pure, unmixed wine, derived from the blood (DM) of the grape it is a blessing. But it can also refer to trouble and a kind of cursing to do with divine judgement and there are various instances of this biblically.
My feeling is that Kubrick has employed several specific reds (his emphasis being on two) deriving from the differences in reds biblically. At heart is their relationship to blood, of wine to blood, and the difference between the spilling of blood which condemns and the spilling of blood which redeems.
One could also suggest that another form of red is had in orange as henna is orange when applied then turns a deep red over three days. The Hebrew word is kopher and means to cover, as in the act of redemption (Yom Kippur, which occurs 9 days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah), perhaps the ritual cleansing of the altar with the smearing of blood, also the kopher, covering of Noah's arc with pitch.
Finally, Alex takes a sip, and the wine seeming to taste fine he relaxes.
ALEX: Very nice little number sir. Well, here's to it!
He toasts them, downing the glass.
ALEX: Very refreshing, sir, very refreshing.
Alex places down his glass, ready to return to the spaghetti.
564 MCU Alexander. (1:52:34)
ALEXANDER: I'm pleased you appreciate good wine. Have another glass.
565 Alex and Julian from the writer's right side. (1:52:40)
Too urgently, the writer pours then places the bottle down.
Alex picks up the glass.
ALEX: Thank you, sir.
He drinks a sip and begins to set the glass down.
ALEXANDER: My wife...!
566 MCU Alexander. (1:52:55)
ALEXANDER: ...used to do everything for me and leave me to my writing.
567 MS Alex and Julian from the writer's right side. (1:53:00)
ALEX (swallowing): Your wife, sir? (Returns to the spaghetti.) Is she away?
568 MCU Alexander. (1:53:04)
ALEXANDER: No, she's dead!
569 MS Alex and Julian from Alexander's right. (1:53:07)
Alex places down his fork, surprised.
ALEX: Oh. I'm sorry to hear about that, sir.
570 MCU Alexander. (1:53:13)
ALEXANDER: She was very badly raped, you see. We were assaulted by a gang of vicious young hoodlums in this house, in this very room you're sitting in now. I was left a helpless cripple but for her the agony was too great. The doctor said it was pneumonia, because it happened some months later, during a flu epidemic. The doctors told me it was pneumonia but I knew what it was! Victim of the modern age, poor, poor girl!
571 MS from beyond the table, facing Alexander, Alex and Julian. (1:53:41)
The writer rolls his chair up to Alex and takes his arm as if sympathetic.
ALEXANDER: And now, you, another victim of the modern age. But you can be helped.
572 Alexander and Alex from Julian's left side. (1:53:51)
ALEXANDER: I phoned some friends while you were having your bath.
ALEX (nervous): Some friends, sir?
ALEXANDER: Yes, they want to help you.
ALEX: Help me, sir?
ALEXANDER: Help you!
ALEX: Who are they, sir?
ALEXANDER: They're very, very important people, and they're interested in you.
The doorbell.
573 MS Alexander, Alex and Julian. (1:54:10)
ALEXANDER: Julian...
Julian rises to answer.
ALEXANDER: This will be these people, now.
ALEX: I don't want to trouble you any further, sir. I think I should be leaving...
Alex rises, and is stayed by Alexander and Julian staring him down.
ALEXANDER: No, no, no, my boy! No trouble at all! Here, let me fill your glass.
574 MS Alexander and Alex. (1:54:27)
He pours him another glass and Alex sips from it.
Shot 566 | Shot 567 |
 |  |
Shot 568 | Shot 569 |
 |  |
Shot 570 | Shot 571 |
 |  |
Shot 572 | Shot 573 |
 |  |
Shot 574 | Shot 575 |
 |  |
575 MS Alex and Alexander from behind. (1:54:37)
They turn to face the back of the room. Alex rises, the visitors entering.
576 LS The long view of the room from behind Alexander and Alex. (1:54:44)
A man in a relaxed brown jacket, fuchsia shirt and tan pants enters, accompanied by a women in a black sweater jacket over a white shirt and black ascot. They greet Alex. Julian follows them down the stairs.
CONSPIRATOR MAN (shaking Alexander's hand): Hello, Frank.
ALEXANDER: Good evening, sir.
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN (kissing Alexander): Oh, Frank.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: So this is the young man. (Extending his hand to shake Alex's.)
ALEX (feeling less anxious, shaking his hand): How do you do, sir.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Hello.
ALEX (shaking the woman's hand): Missus. Very nice to meet you.
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: Hello.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: I hope you'll forgive us for coming over at this ungodly hour but we heard from Frank that you were in some trouble and so we came over to see if we could be of any help.
ALEX (looking uncomfortably at the ever somber and imposing Julian): Very kind of you, sir. Thank you very much.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: I understand you had a rather unfortunate encounter with the police tonight.
They all seat themselves, Julian to Alexander's right, the woman and man to Alex's left.
ALEX: Yes, sir. I suppose you could call it that, sir.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: How do you feel now?
ALEX: Much better, sir.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Feel like talking to us? Answering a few questions?
ALEX: Fine, sir, fine.
The woman has taken a tablet and pen from her purse.
577 LS The table with all seated at it from behind Alex. (1:55:29)
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Well, as I've said, we've heard about you. We are interested...
With the arrival of the visitors we have now two different lighting situations, one bright and one more daylight and subdued. A very great contrast when viewed side by side.
578 MS Alexander and Alex from the woman's left. (1:55:53)
CONSPIRATOR MAN: ...in your case. We want to help you.
ALEX (glancing at the ever scowling Alexander): Thank you very much, sir.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Well, shall we, uh...
579 MS Conspirator man and Julian from the woman's left. (1:55:39)
CONSPIRATOR MAN: ...get down to it?
ALEX: Fine, fine, sir.
580 MS Alexander and Alex, and the woman from the conspirator man's right. (1:55:43)
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: The newspaper's mentioned that in addition to your being conditioned against acts of sex and violence you've inadvertently been conditioned against music.
ALEX: Well, I think that was something that they didn't plan for. You see, missus, I'm very fond of music.
The woman congenially takes notes.
ALEX: Especially Beethoven. Uhm, Ludwig Van Beethoven. B - E...
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: That's all right, thank you.
ALEX: And it just so happened that while they were showing me a particularly bad film, like a concentration camp, the background music was playing Beethoven.
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: So now you have the same reaction to music as you do to sex and violence.
ALEX: No, missus. It's not all music. It's just the Ninth.
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: You mean Beethoven's Ninth Symphony?
ALEX: That's right. I can't listen to the Ninth any more at all. When I hear the Ninth I get like this funny feeling.
581 MS Conspirator Man and Julian from the woman's left. (1:56:49)
ALEX: And then all I can think about is like trying to snuff it.
582 MS Alexander, Alex and the woman from the conspirator man's right. (1:56:54)
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: I beg your pardon?
ALEX: Snuff it, sir. I mean, death, I mean, missus. (Looking at her notepad to make sure she gets it correctly.) I just want to die peacefully...like...with...no...pain.
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Do you feel that way now?
ALEX: Uhm, oh, no, sir, not exactly. I still feel very...
583 CU Alexander. (1:57:11)
ALEX: ...miserable. Very much down...in...spirits.
Just look at the lighting below. Completely different in alternating shots 575-582. From the front and right the lighting appears as daylight. From the rear and 3/4 right (showing the front of the room, again) we can see it instead night and the lighting is all artificial, dependent on the giant bulbs that reflect ever so beautifully in the table, such as in shot 577 where Alex is framed left and right by the lights and their reflections.
Shot 576 | Shot 577 |
 |  |
Shot 578 | Shot 579 |
 |  |
Shot 580 | Shot 581 |
 |  |
Shot 582 | Shot 583 |
 |  |
Shot 584 | Shot 585 |
 |  |
584 MS Alexander, Alex and the woman from the conspirator man's right. (1:57:15)
CONSPIRATOR WOMAN: Do you still feel suicidal?
ALEX: Uh, well, put it this way. I feel very low in meself. I can't see much in the future. And I feel that any second something terrible is gonna happen to me.
Alex collapses face first in his spaghetti, drugged by the wine.
The woman closes her notepad.
585 MCU Alexander pulling Alex's head up by his hair. (1:57:43)
Alex's face is covered with the orange glop of spaghetti sauce echoing the color of Frank's orange jumpsuit. Alex's hate and fury, hardly contained before, have so overtaken him the flesh of his face shakes.
586 CU Alex's face covered in orange. (1:57:47)
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Well done, Frank.
587 CU Alexander. (1:57:50) He lets fall Alex's face again into the spaghetti.
Shot 586 | Shot 587 |
 |  |
Shot 588 | |
 | |
588 MS Conspirator man and Julian from the woman's left. (1:57:54)
CONSPIRATOR MAN: Julian, get the car, would you, please?
Julian rises from the table. We hear his footsteps as he cross the floor.
ALEX TAKES A FLYING LEAP
A COMPARISON OF THE INSPIRATION FOR ALEX'S SUICIDAL LEAP WITH THE PROGRAMMING ALEX RECEIVES IN THE BOOK - ODE TO JOY AS A DEATH SONG - THE SUICIDE SCHERZO, ALEX'S LEAP AND THE DANCING CHRISTS - BRINGING THE "DIVINE EDGAR" INTO THE MIX
589 CU Alex's sleeping face. (1:58:02) Cut to Alex dressed in his soiled but dry suit, on a bed covered by a manila yellow blanket, Beethoven's 9th Symphony 2nd Movement playing loudly. He wakes belching, sickened.
ALEX (VO): I woke up, the pain and sickness all over me like an animal.
The camera zooms out to show that side of what is an attic room with white and lavender wallpaper, a sink, and white cane chairs.
ALEX (VO): Then I realized what it was. The music coming up from the floor was our old friend Ludwig Van, and the dreaded 9th Symphony.
Alex gets up and stumbles to the door as the music loudly reverberates. He yells for the music to be turned off. Stomps the floor.
ALEX (banging on the door): Let me out! Open the door! Come on, open the door! Help! Turn it off! (he stomps the floor.) Turn it off. (He gets down on his knees and pounds the floor with his hands.) Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Stop it!
590 CU Alexander's face. (1:59:18)
Cut to the writer listening from a room below, looking up, wearing Beethoven's scowling intense expression, shaking, blinking, grimacing, smiling.
ALEX: Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Turn it off!!! Please!!! Turn it off!!!
The camera zooms out to show a tape deck and two large loudspeakers on a pool table. To the rear, against the wall, stand the conspirator woman and Julian, leaning against the wall. The conspirator man stands to the front rolling billiard balls across the table into a pocket.
591 MS Alex banging his head on the floor. (2:00:04)
Cut to Alex banging his head on the floor, screaming for them to turn off the music, belching.
ALEX: Turn it off! Please, turn it off!
Alex sits up and stares at a row of windows we see reflected in the mirrors of an armoire behind him. The camera zooms in on his tormented face.
ALEX (VO): Suddenly I viddied what I had to do and what I had wanted to do and that was to do myself in...
592 MS Alex from behind, the windows beyond. (2:00:35) Alex stands and goes to the windows.
ALEX (VO): ...to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked cruel world.
Shot 591 | Shot 592 |
 |  |
Shot 593 | |
 | |
593 LS Alex climbing up in the window casement. (2:00:40) He struggles to open one of the windows.
ALEX (VO): One moment of pain perhaps, and then sleep forever and ever...
594 LS Exterior window. (2:00:49)
ALEX (VO): ...and ever.
Alex throws himself out of the window into the blue.
He screams as he plummets down in a swimmer like plunge, holding his head, his body folding over.
595 POV of Alex falling to the walk below. (2:00:56)
The walk and grass alongside rush up to meet the camera. Clang. The screen goes black. The music ends. I have already covered in section five how during the Ludovico Cinema brainwashing of Alex, while the Beethoven is being played, he sees Nazi planes from which parachutists leap, the number of the plane foremost being 0141 which is a permutation of Serum-114 (CRM-114). My idea is that Alex has not only been inadvertently programmed against Beethoven's 9th, but has been programmed to leap out the window.
Indeed, suggestion is used in Burgess' book.
...and then on top of the pile of books and papers and all that cal that was on the table in the living-room I viddied what I had to do and what I had wanted to do until those old men in the Public Biblio and then Dim and Billyboy disguised as rozzoes stopped me, and that was to do myself in, to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked and cruel world. What I viddied was the slovo DEATH on the cover of a like pamphlet, even though it was only DEATH TO THE GOVERNMENT. And like it was Fate there was another like malenky booklet which had an open window on the cover, and it said: 'Open the window to fresh air, fresh ideas, a new way of living.' And so I knew that was like telling me to finish it all off by jumping out. One moment of pain, perhaps, and then sleep for ever and ever.
The image of Beethoven upon Alex's window becomes also then a call to the window from which he will leap, Beethoven bearing the heavy-browed, scowl of Alexander.
The meeting with the conspirators took place in the book but not the type of interview in the movie. When they arrived, Alexander had already written a piece for publication on Alex. There was no questioning about what music he was accidentally conditioned against (and, by the way, the music played in the book when Alex jumps is not Beethoven's 9th, it is instead Otto Skadelig's Sympony Number Three), and Alex did not say that when he listened to the ninth he wanted to snuff it, he instead said, "I just want to die peacefully...like...with...no...pain."
The "Ode to Joy" is dedicated to the pleasures of the Underworld, to the paradisaical Elysium.
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, your sanctuary!
Your magic reunites
What custom strictly divided.
All men become brothers,
Where your gentle wing rests.
Whoever has had the great fortune
To be a friend's friend,
Whoever has won a devoted wife,
Join in our jubilation!
Indeed, whoever can call even one soul
His own on this earth!
And whoever was never able to, must creep
Tearfully away from this band!
Joy all creatures drink
At the breasts of nature;
All good, all bad
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us, and wine,
A friend, proved to the end;
Pleasure was given to the worm,
And the cherub stands before God.
Before God!
Glad, as His suns fly
Through the Heaven's glorious design,
Run, brothers, your path,
Joyful, as a hero to victory...
In it even the worm is given pleasure, and what is Leviathan but ThLI, a worm?
But the 4th movement, the "Ode to Joy" is not playing here, instead it is the 2nd movement, the scherzo, titled in the soundtrack as the suicide scherzo.
Scherzo, meaning "sport, joke", comes from the Germanic "scherzen", meaning "to jump with joy." Ultimately it comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "to dance, jump". Thus we find in the Suicide Scherzo, a commentary on this movement being what Alex chose to play the night he returned home following the invasion of HOME. As the music began Kubrick went immediately to the Beethoven window blind, zooming in on its eyes, then to the figurine of the chorus line of dancing Christs--the scherzo suggesting the Christs are dancing a suicide scherzo--and finally to the pictures that the music inspired in Alex's head. These had been first a hanging (Jane Fonda's stuntman in Cat Ballou), multiple explosions and a shot taken from One Million Years B.C. of an avalanche of boulders raining down on the heads of several cavemen. Alex slept, and when he awoke it was to the sound of his mother knocking on the door, to which Alex replied he had a pain in his gulliver.
As the next scene opens, Alex will remark on his returning to life after a black gap of what might have been a million years. And this is why there had been the clip from the movie One Million Years B.C..
This suicide scene isn't at the writer's home, though the writer's home would have been appropriate as where it was filmed was a place called "Skybreak". Instead this was filmed at a hotel (perhaps then a country club, I've seen it listed variously) called Edgwarebury. We see three wood diamonds below the window out of which Alex leaps, the building being in typical Tudor architecture. So too did we see diamonds in the Duke of York pub, and that pub scene also happened to be filmed in Edgware.Edgware comes from the Saxon Edgi weir, weir meaning pond.
Let's look back at the Duke of York Pub and what immediately preceded it, which was the encounter with Dim and Georgie Boy by the marina, Alex upsetting their bid for power and taking leadership again. I had noted back in the marina section how Kubrick had made especial use of the word "dim" in Lolita and probably had linkages from that between the two films. In Lolita Humbert had read a poem to Lolita written by the "divine Edgar" and remarked on it to her.
Notice how he emphasizes this word. 'It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, in the misty mid region of Weir.' You see, he takes a word like 'dim' in one line and twists it? And it comes back as 'mid region of Weir'.
The poem by the divine Edgar (Allen Poe) involving dim and Weir becomes here Edgi Weir which is Edgware and Edgwarebury.
Lolita had shown up at Humbert's door with his breakfast of eggs and bacon. After the dialogue she holds above Humbert's head the egg, "egging" him on as it were, teasing him, to take a bite of it from her hand, telling him it is a reward. Frustrated with his desire for her, he ridiculously grabs her hand and greedily consumes the egg.
None of this was in the Nabakov's book. Not the "divine Edgar", not the poem, not the discussion of dim and weir, and not even Lolita feeding Humbert the eggs.
The verb "edge", has the following etymology.
late 13c., "to give an edge to" (implied in pp. egged), from edge (n.). Meaning "to move edgeways (with the edge toward the spectator), advance slowly" is from 1620s, originally nautical. Meaning "to defeat by a narrow margin" is from 1953. The meaning "urge on, incite" (16c.) often must be a mistake for egg (v.). Related: Edged; edging
egg (v.) Look up egg at Dictionary.com c.1200, from O.N. eggja "to goad on, incite," from egg "edge" (see edge). The unrelated verb meaning "to pelt with (rotten) eggs" is from 1857, from egg (n.). Related: Egged; egging.
Source: Online Etymology Dictionary
Thus Edgar (edge) and the egg, as in being goaded, incited. Thus Edgware is used as a set up for what occurs in one of the following scenes in the hospital involving some eggs.
Approx words or 18 and 1/2 single-spaced pages. A 70 minute read at 130 wpm.
Go to Part Eight
Go to Table of Contents of the analysis
Link to the main TOC page for all the analyses
 |