The legacy of A Clockwork Orange in The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (Thomas Clay, 2005) and Bronson (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009): ‘all form and no content’?

Abstract

This article considers the legacy and influence of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) in contemporary cinema. Kubrick’s film received criticism on its release for the director’s supposed excessive attention to form at the expense of content (what some termed the ‘aestheticization of violence’). Two recent directors that have frequently been compared to Kubrick, Thomas Clay and Nicholas Winding Refn, have similarly been criticised for their aestheticization of violence in their films. Drawing upon news clippings of film reviews, the article compares Clay’s The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005) and Refn’s Bronson (2009) to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange to consider how the media discourse surrounding Kubrick’s film continues to inform contemporary criticism of violence in film. The article addresses the reception of these films through the prism of the form vs content dichotomy initiated by Kubrick himself. Archival material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive relating to the reception of Kubrick’s film is used to support a comparative approach and show that the accusations aimed at the imitators of Kubrick continue a debate that actually started with A Clockwork Orange itself.