There's nothing comic about rape, nor anything funny in crippling violence. But the disturbing, illuminating "A Clockwork Orange" manages, in a way, to rattlingly prove differently. Set in the vague, possibly post-apocalyptic future, Stanley Kubrick's undulating exploitation/exploration of morality digs its hooks into an underworld of thoughtless youth violence, then traces one gangster-rapist to his imprisonment and cruel rehabilitation. The focus and narrator is a boy named Alex (Malcolm McDowell), who rampages through the streets, pillaging homes and harassing the homeless. Along with his pals the Droogs, Alex prepares for his exploits by getting hopped up on stimulant-added "milk plus" at the Korova Milkbar, which is decorated with seats and tables consisting of Allen Jones-influenced sculptures of naked women bending backward. The furniture speaks volumes about the Droogs' view of women. Alex, a devotee of the music of Beethoven, which also serves as the film's score, spends his days avoiding school and his parents and seeking out base pleasures. He dresses himself in a baroque disguise, with a phallic nose cover, fake eyelashes, bowler hat, a walking stick that doubles as a weapon, combat boots and bloody eyeball cufflinks. Kubrick's wide-angle lenses set up a distortion of the outer edges, so in first-person shots we see the world as the alienated Alex does, with the normalcy of the center bombarded by looming forces from the outside. Kubrick also forced continuity errors into his precisely designed images, moving objects around from scene to scene without explanation. This guides the audience to share Alex's cold suspicion of the arbitrariness of the world and the xenophobia that compels him to be an easy-living criminal. Alex and the Droogs' game is to knock on doors, urgently beg for help for a dying friend, then proceed to playfully annihilate the interior, sparing none of its inhabitants. In one grotesquely comedic scene, Alex dances around and croons "Singin' in the Rain" and cuts off the clothes of a woman while his comrades hold her down. Alex also uses a stick to beat the woman's husband, the Droogs pin the unwitting man, forcing him in writhing torture to watch the annihilation of his wife. It's as though Kubrick, working from the Anthony Burgess novel, wants the audience to take guilty pleasure in the violence. That uncomfortable notion forces us to shamefully question the dark corners of our minds that can be secretly amused by such things. Once we've identified with Alex's evil, however fleetingly, it is impossible to regard his actions without slight sparks of sympathy, and Kubrick masterfully fans those sparks into flames of compassion when Alex suffers his third-act payback. Alex is continually tortured as punishment for his crimes. It starts with a prison sentence, which Alex commutes by consenting to the grotesque, experimental Ludovico Treatment, in which his eyes are propped open while he is bombarded with images of sex and violence to condition a sickness whenever such thoughts cross his mind. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is played as background, giving Alex a gut-wrenching reaction to the sounds, which he formerly adored. Alex becomes "good" not because he wants to be, not because of any inner epiphany, but from a twisted physiological shackle in his brain. Things only get worse for Alex after his release. He is revenged upon by a group of homeless, led by a man he once gratuitously beat for sport, and the police, who turn out to be his old Droogmates, turn him into the object of their sick pleasures. Alex also must eventually face the victim, now crippled, whose wife he violated in front of him. All of these retributions feel wholeheartedly justified, and we bloodthirstily relish Alex's comeuppance. It's tough not to feel for him, though, in a sad, lonely scene that penetrates our defenses: Alex returns home to discover there is no place for him, his room having been rented out. His family has taken a replacement son. Notoriously eccentric and detail-obsessive, Kubrick was known to force actors through take after take, past the point of exhaustion, with no breaks. In his personal life, Kubrick was said to be reclusive and irrationally afraid of flying. He was a stickler for his precise vision, and his intense devotion shined through in his astounding body of work. Kubrick's films simply do not age, as is reflected by the Internet Movie Database poll, which ranks five Kubrick movies in history's top 100 and nine in the top 250. The director moved easily among comedy ("Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"), science fiction ("2001: A Space Odyssey"), horror ("The Shining") and war ("Paths of Glory," "Full Metal Jacket"). "A Clockwork Orange," one of two X-rated films nominated for a best picture Oscar - the rating was later reduced to an R - may be Kubrick's greatest film, for its lasting influence and social significance. Kubrick's frightening vision portrayed a natural human tendency toward lawlessness. A fearful populace demands it be combatted by law enforcement that in the end strips us of our humanity just as much as the anarchy. Some would say we inch closer to that reality every day. In one scene, a prison chaplain observes, "If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." And although the Ludovico Treatment has freed the streets of a criminal, it has taken a small step toward the greater crime of robbing humanity of its essence, replacing it with clockwork.