This movie's biggest failing for me

the dress code of Alex and the droogs, and especially the decor of the Korova Milk Bar with its' vaguely pornographic depiction of naked women with their legs apart, are ideas of society that 'civilization' over 40 years later still has to catch up with.


Some of the architecture chosen for location work looked 'futuristic' at the time. Some of the artefacts like the womb-like chair used by Mrs Alexander still looks a bit beyond our time.


But otherwise I agree with you: most of the movie after the beginning looks like it was shot cheaply on location, which looks deliberate.

I thought it looked only vaguely futuristic, but that did not bother me.

If the future is dystonian, why would expect there to be advancements of any kind? The people have regressed and society had become cruel and vulgar.

There were still some things that were futuristic for the time - The car the droogs were in, the police vehicle, the music store, the mini-cassette, and some of the furniture at his house.

It looks absolute magnificent. What hipster would not give his left nut for getting his apartment decorated like this and hang out in the Korova Milk Bar.

"I'm not an idiot. "

u sure?

I think it's the right kind of futuristic approach for this material.
I haven't read the book nor do I care to for this film's sake, so I'll just consider the film and what's in it: it's not 2001, a future with space stations and video phones where we're shooting beyond jupiter. It's a dystopian future of a not so faraway future, and I believe Kubrick wanted to stay close to english reality of the 70s without making it sci fi. So it's regular everyday life, only they speak a weird slang, they have weird values n habits, they dress weirdly, but the rest is our world.
The house decoration, the hairdos, cars etc, are futuristic but still familiar (blue hair but no flying car nor robot house). That adds a lot to the shock value of the events, or it would be too unfamiliar for us to connect: it's our world, just a couple of years from now, and look at the state of humanity!

It looked like what the future was imagined to be in the 70’s, much as with other contemporary sci-fi like Soylent Green. There were actual ahead-of-their-time items like Alex’s cool turntable and speakers, and stereo Deutsche Gramophone microcassettes (ooooooh!). I don’t believe those last were ever a real music format, but it was a credible leap. And the Durango 95, that record shop, and of course, the Korova. There’s a reason that scene comes first — to really orient you in this future world and make you believe.

Update: Turns out, there *were* “high fidelity” stereo microcassettes — in 1982. So this 1971 flick correctly predicted a future tech development 11 years prior.

If it's not about the technology or the future not matching our personal present experience then your argument has no legs to stand on.

The dystopian future displayed in this story reflects an embedded establishment of intellectuals running a large populace dominated by half-witted citizens who are easily swayed by propaganda and tranquilized with mindless pop culture. As you stated you know that the aesthetic doesn't quite age well as nobody knows what the future is going to look like and every movie that attempts this usually becomes a victim of its time and perception. Even Bladerunner has a lot of 70s/80s post-apocalyptic aesthetics that today wouldn't feel familiar to someone under the age of thirty (even though retro-wave music celebrating 80s aesthetic has a younger fanbase).