A Clockwork Orange (1971)

   Overall I think this is a well made film, I love the bizarre world that's been created; everything in it seems a bit "off". The camera work is decisive and powerful, I feel like every shot is designed to make you feel a specific degree of discomfort with what you're watching, every character seems a bit inhuman and strange, and the made-up "Pidgin" language is very effective at bringing you into this strange, alternate future-esque world.

  However, despite its merits, I still find this to be ineffective storytelling.

This film is focused entirely on one character: Alex. This makes him the main character, and as an audience, we perceive the events of the movie through him. This is a problem because we need to relate to him in some way, but within the first 10 minutes he is thoroughly established as a selfish, manipulative and irredeemably evil person.

   As a result of this, the rest of the movie is emotionally frustrating - despite him being an evil bastard, we're still told he's the main character . . . so we follow Alex around, hoping against hope that we will find something, anything about him to relate with. But there isn't anything, he has no emotions to speak of, and cares for nothing about himself and what's his. His only desires are to escape prison, in order to commit more acts of violence.

   The only point where there is any hope of caring about Alex, is when he is released and his world is turned against him - he is shunned by his parents, beaten by hobos, beaten by his 'friends' then captured and tortured by one of his past victims. This is somewhat satisfying, as the only thing we've learned about Alex thus far is that he is reprehensible and deserves to be beaten and tortured.

   But, as it turns out these events lead to him being completely absolved of his crimes - through no effort on his part; no remorse, no change of heart, no lesson learned, no attempt to compensate for his actions in any way. Even his attempted suicide, which could have had some sort of altruistic motivation, was a logical solution for the pain he himself was feeling - nothing to do with another person.

I leave you with a slightly exaggerated, but not inaccurate summary of the film:

Once upon a time . . .
there was an evil, evil boy who did many evil, evil things. The boy is arrested and goes to prison where he is bored for some time, then gets tortured a bit, and beaten up.
Then they let him go.
The End.