The Stanley Kubrick movie opening Quentin Tarantino called “pretty fucking perfect”
Not only is Quentin Tarantino one of the most celebrated movie directors of his generation, but he also serves as something of a cinematic historian, possessing an encyclopaedic knowledge of the entire movie industry, from huge blockbuster hits to indie gems from across the world.
Throughout his career, Tarantino has offered his opinion on pretty much every kind of movie genre or director, and he has naturally spoken of the legendary Stanley Kubrick. Interestingly, Tarantino seems to harbour mixed feelings about the film icon, at once admiring him and scorning him.
Of course, Kubrick is known for producing some of the most impressive pieces of cinema of all time, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. Yet Tarantino seems most taken with another director’s movie, his 1971 effort A Clockwork Orange.
Based on Anthony Burgess’ novel of the same name, A Clockwork Orange depicts a future version of the UK run by a totalitarian regime. It tells of a young man who commits a series of horrific and violent crimes with his gang of friends and is eventually subjected to an experimental form of aversion therapy to reform him into a functioning member of society.
Tarantino was particularly impressed with the way A Clockwork Orange opens, once telling The New Yorker, “That first 20 minutes is pretty fucking perfect. The whole non-stop parade of Alex and the druids or whatever they were called: they beat up a bum, they have a gang fight, they go to the milk bar, they rape a girl, they break into the house, and they’re driving and playing the Beethoven, and Malcolm McDowell’s fantastic narration is going on.”
According to Tarantino, the opening of Kubrick’s 1971 film is “as poppy and visceral and perfect a piece of cinematic moviemaking as I think had ever been done up until that time.” Indeed, the beginning of A Clockwork Orange is a captivating film showcasing the sheer violence and misdeeds of its protagonist, Alex DeLarge.
Interestingly, though, although Tarantino absolutely loves the first 20 minutes of the film, he thought Kubrick himself was something of a “hypocrite,” especially considering that the director had said that his work was not necessarily a film about violence but rather a film against violence.
Offering his dismay at Kubrick’s notions, Tarantino noted, It’s just, like, ‘Get the fuck off’. I know, and you know your dick was hard the entire time you were shooting those first twenty minutes; you couldn’t keep it in your pants the entire time you were editing it and scoring it.”
In typical Tarantino fashion, he describes Kubrick getting his rocks off while making A Clockwork Orange and showing Alex’s violent acts. According to the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs director, Kubrick “liked” the rest of the film, where he could posit that “violence is bad” and that he’d only had the first visceral moments to set the scene.
Still, despite Tarantino’s criticisms of Kubrick regarding his opinion of the violence in A Clockwork Orange, the 1971 film is still the work in which Tarantino (known for his own violent movies) thinks Kubrick achieved true cinematic “perfection”. Without a doubt, Kubrick has achieved masterpiece status in his movies so many times, but concerning opening sequences, it doesn’t get better in the eyes of Tarantino than at the beginning of his Burgess adaptation.
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