Saturday, November 2, 2019

Explanation of the ending of A Clockwork Orange - Movies & TV




The ending of the film perplexed me a bit. The main hero says, quote, "I was cured alright".



While that could be interpreted as honest and truthful, the final scene (the fantasized orgy) makes me think, he might have been sarcastic with that last remark, and maybe he pretended to be cured to get out of the therapy program. Is there any (other) significance to that fantasy? Was Alex honest when he said he was cured?


Answer



One thing you have to understand is that the book this movie was based on had a missing last chapter in American books. In the American books, the last chapter mirrored the last part of the film. In the UK version, the last chapter shows that Alex was 'cured' as much as possible, in that he ultimately gave up on violence of his own free will. See the Wikipedia article here.



In the movie, as it stands, the 'cure' is that Alex was able to think for himself again, society be damned. The implication of the ending of the movie is that the politicians were willing to let Alex be his old self again, as long as it made them (temporarily) look good (not to mention that they used Alex's conditioning and subsequent rehabilitation to settle a score against the writer who drove Alex insane). So yes, he was being sarcastic, in that he was cured, all right - he was back to the same guy he was before.


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