Everybody knows the scene where he first steps in jail and must register his name and give his belongings to the guard. What was the purpose of all that? It took like 8-10 minutes and it didn't seem to be relevant at all...
Can somebody explain this one?
just off the top of my head not that I'm 100% sure...
Kubrick wasn't afraid to be deliberate with his scenes. Think the docking scenes from 2001.
My guess is it was detailing a very different environment that was almost completely the opposite of Alex's previous lifestyle. In the free world, he was his own master, he feared no one, he answered to nobody. In jail, he was going to be forced into a strict system that requires adherence to its rules and obedience to its leaders. The drawn out depiction of the bureaucratic and sometimes asinine process in cataloging his belongings and signing forms was the polar opposite of Alex's previous lifestyle.
You hit the nail on the head.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, or doesn't.
Yes, it was to get the viewer used to the new dynamic, from anarchy to jail.
shareI love this movie and I loved the book, but this scene is not one of my favorites. While I agree that Alex has to be humiliated here to indicate that he's no longer in control, I think Kubrick added this scene (it's not in the novel) largely to pander to the youth audience at the time.
With the Vietnam War only just starting to wind down, this scene was deliberately shot to mirror an "induction physical" for a draftee in the U.S. Army. In other words, Alex's nightmare is that of all able-bodied young American men at the time. It's sort of a cheap way of saying that Alex is "one of us," i.e. just another hippy dude being hassled by The Man, instead of the one of a kind psychopath he really is.
"Your next challenge is always your biggest." Joe Namath
It's a friggin boring scene that one
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