Been occasionally watching this masterpiece since adolescence, each time getting a different impression. Hence, I'll develop clearer on my last one. I consider this movie to represent the tensions in society regarding how crime and societal response should work (and who's responsible for this, with the appearance of symbolic figures as the State, the Church, intellectuals, family), as much for punishment or rehabilitation. Whether a criminal could be rehabilitated, whether society would actually and eventually accept and trust the rehabilitated criminal, re-integrate him after succeeding in his "treatment", and the ethical limits of such a treatment.

[spoiler] First time I watched this movie, I interpreted the Ludovico technique as a dystopian element to precisely make satire to criticize the rehabilitation through personal meaning and choice the jail priest argued for (I'm agnostic). In other words, society gave up trust in rehabilitation through moral development of the individual and overpassed his will through psychological conditioning.

Yet now I consider this technique in a more neutral light, as the utilitarian solution showing itself as more optimal than the moral-ingraing one. This in light of considering poor real life rehabilitation results for the second, which I'd adjudicate in real life not only to individual but social circumstances. Oddly enough, I sensed the movie shows how society rejected the individual in spite of his scientific rehabilitation.[/spoiler]

In summary, this movie made me reflect on the diverse set of beliefs regarding crime as a phenomenon tensioned between a deterministic cynicism on human moral development, and a free will idealistic notion that people can rectify themselves by choice. I personally consider a criminal results from the complex interaction of both ends, and in spite of humanity being nowadays particularly close to impressive capacity of societal moral order and control through technology and cultural evolution, we're still by no means attacking the root but the symptoms of crime, which I still advocate for.