I've read that a lot of people think the movie was more violent than the book. That's really interesting to me, because for me the book was way worse than the movie. Nadsat absolutely put a filter on everything that happened but the movie showed much less.

(From now on !TW! as I'll talk about the heavy themes of the book/movie)

First of all, the fact that Alex is 17 in the movie but played by a 27 year old Malcolm McDowell, who very much looked like an adult, makes the ultraviolence that happens onscreen just less shocking. It also takes away from the whole message.

In the book, Alex is a 15 year old teenager and Anthony Burgess didn't make that choice by coincidence. By making Alex so very young, the author makes the dilemma and violence as uncomfortable as possible for the reader. The state forces him to be sickened by all violence instead of rehabilitating a minor and letting him grow out of it. (As it could be seen as a destructive phase of teen rebellion or the fact that they were all constantly on drugs.) That's also why the 21st chapter is so important to the whole message of the book as we see that Alex begins to lose interest in violence as he grows older, without being forced to change.

Even more disturbing is the the change in the age of his victims. In the movie, the two girls Alex meets at a record shop are played by 25 and 27 year old actresses. He takes them home and they all have sex. Nothing looks forced.

In the book, the two girls are 10 year old children. He takes them home, gets them extremely drunk and then brutally rapes them. This scene is very descriptive and the main reason why I think the book is so much worse than the movie. If there's one change I really don't like about the film, it's that they made this whole part look consensual.

The reason I think a lot of people still find the movie harder to watch is because of Nadsat. The slang is used in both the film and the book, but it can't hide the violence as well in the movie because we can actually see what's happening on screen. In the book, the unfamiliar words create a distance between the reader and the events. We have to imagine the violence ourselves and Alex describes it so casual that it can make us feel strangely detached. Nadsat makes the book's violence easier to read on the surface, but the contrast between Alex's casual narration and what he actually does can make it more disturbing when you think about it.

It’s actually really interesting how much language can change the way we perceive something. The book is much more violent than the movie, yet it can feel less disturbing because of the way that violence is presented to us. Nadsat almost tricks us into forgetting what Alex is actually doing, making us read things we find unbearable to watch on screen.