Amazon.com: Michael Radford's adaption of George Orwell's foreboding literary premonition casts John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton as lovers who must keep their courtship secret. Aside from criminalizing sex and interpersonal relationships, the ruling party in their country Oceania both fabricates reality and reconstructs history for the sake of oppressing the masses. They brainwash their citizens via large, propaganda-spewing TV monitors installed in their living rooms, which also inspect everyone's activities. Hurt and Hamilton are among the few we see desperately trying to fight the system by keeping control of their thoughts and beliefs. While the atmosphere becomes a bit too stifling at times, the images are quite striking with their muted colors and dilapidated sets. In an interesting bit of casting, Richard Burton costars (in his final role) as a government agent who surreptitiously exposes Hurt to the ideas of resistance. Unlike many like-minded films, 1984 does not offer a flashy vision of the future, but then that aspect makes it feel all the more real. In an age when more and more of our everyday activities are being scrutinized, Big Brother may not be so far off after all. --Bryan Reesman
Out of print masterpiece... I saw this film when it was first released; it was emotionally and spiritually devastating. I had just finished the book with the knowledge that this was due for release, and felt as if I could not draw breath when leaving the theater. What great actors. I wish this was widely in print; I keep searching for it every few years hoping it will be made available at some point, but it seems not to be. The prices listed are too steep for my blood; the movie will have to live on in memory only. Time to re-read the book!!
Brilliantly concieved, yet fails to grasp the most important concepts of the novel. 3.5/5 - Beautifully crafted sets and spectacular acting are marred by an inability to grasp some of the most important concepts in the novel. Particularily the Novels final, perhaps most crucial chapter.
***Be forewarned I will deal with spoilers of the novel from here-out to illustrate my point.***
I will begin with the single most important concept this film does not deal with, and that is the novels final and most important Chapter. Nineteen Eighty-Four the film almost completely ignores this final chapter. The Bookdoes far more to explain the aftermath of winstons treatment, and this is crucial to our understanding. Granted, the Books end can be perceived very different between individuals. I personally found it redeeming and hopeful of the future. The party meant to stamp the emotion, cognitive ability, and love right out of winston. Instead, they taught him how to really love, think about the world around him, and feel good natured emotion. To become a better man. The Ministry of Love had created in all their efforts exactly what they were trying to destroy. The party was falliable. It might fall, but Winston felt great gratitude towards Big Brother for teaching him these things. Winston loved Big Brother for it. Not in the way the party intended, but would he rise up against them? I do not know. The film did little to express the ideas of this chapter, and I would have had no way of formulating this idea of the novels conclusion based on it. I do not believe any viewer could come to an accurate conclusion of their personal theories of the novels final chapter based on the film. Some changes may always be necessary, even if just for keeping the running length below 3 hours, but this final chapter IMO needed to be shot word for word, scene for scene, in order, with every action maticulously displayed. The film even leaves out the crucial 'I betrayed you' comments by Winston and Julia to each other.
Many other small situational contexts were changed throughout, such as the timing of events, and characters involved. George Orwell set out events in the Book in a particular order for a reason. The changing of the timing of these events blurs the ideas a little, but not to the point of serious detrement. The film does however, botch up dealing with the Brotherhood. Little mention is ever made in the film about the Brotherhood. It was my interpretation that the Brotherhood was organised and controlled by the party. An ultimate form of control. Consider the line in the book referring that the party makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship. None of this was touched upon in the film. Winston does not bring Julia to see O' Brian, and the conversation between the three does not take place in the context of the Book. In fact, a viewer who has not read the Book may not even grasp that O' Brian is claiming to be part of the Brotherhood at all.
There are numerous other little changes I will not touch on. These two are the most important, and most detremental to a film that is among the greatest ever made in the fields of acting and cinematography/directing. The scenes involving a crowd watching the telescreen are classics of cinema.
So my verdict? Do not see this movie if you have not read the book. You will not get an acurate representation of the most important concepts with which to formulate an understanding of the material. Even Winstons time in the Ministry of Love is portrayed on a level minimal to the length of coverage given in the book. Read the book, then see the movie for it's artistic merits and to understand from what direction it was made, filling in the various holes from your previous reading. As a film not based on prior material, it would be one of the greatest films ever made, but it is based on a book, with ideas that crucially must be represented here. Some of the most important, are not.
"All of the confessions here are true, Winston..." If there was any one single book I would peg for being inaccessible to a successful film adaptation, it would be George Orwell's "1984". How could any director bring to life Orwell's cautionary, almost unbearably nightmarish literary dystopia to the screen without screwing up even in the tiniest way? Orwell's body of work is remarkable not only for the scope of his political imagination, but the tiny idiosyncrasies of imagination which make the reader uncomfortable.
Well, kudos to Michael Radford, because he did exactly that, and then some. This is perfect. And I mean perfect in the classical sense; without flaw. I remember first seeing it on the Sci-fi channel as a kid and it lodged in my memory like a tick; the scenes with Winston (played with a kind of wounded, vulnerable purity by Jonn Hurt) and the melancholy monster O' Brien (played with a chillingly resigned, Shakespearean delicacy by Richard Burton) in the party's interrogation/toture chamber are absolutely unforgettable. Despite being his last role while dying of liver cancer, this has to be one of Burton's best performances.
The future is not some paradise filled with new invetions or moving sidewalks. It is an impoverished, shrapnel ridden hell where Winston narrowly navigates his way to something like life, at least inside. His job as a member of Oceania's Party is to destroy the past; he scratches out newspapers, discards photographs of party members (or not), and against his own will takes place in the gigantic Crime Against Humanity that the world has become. Radford's aesthetic sensibilities were perfectly surreal; the telescreen of Big Brother is still, beige and illuminated, and you actually feel as though he is "watching". Orwell obviously took a lot of inspiration from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia; as Winston and Julia (played wonderfully by Suzanna Hamilton) stand and cheer, the man on the telescreen looks a great deal like Rudolph Hess.
Winston and Julia lose, just as in the book, and badly. Everyone is a traitor (sound familiar?). Burton easily takes Winston in, betrays, tortures and successfully brainwashes him. "Humanity is the Party".
I cannot believe that some of the reviewers here have the guts to claim there are no parallels between this film and our world. Just as in the movie, we are continually lied to about war, who we are fighting, and as O'Brien tells Winston, we are drugged on notions of false "victory". An obvious parallel is that during one week in Winston's Oceania the country is at war with Eastasia, then Eurasia: at one period of time we are at war with Iran, the next Iraq, then as an afterthought perhaps, Afghanistan.
Anyway, this is more than a must see: this is an work of art that cannot be missed in this lifetime.
Why no Re-release??? Brilliant acting, screenplay, sets, direction, etc. Obviously very well received and critiqued. Why is MGM dragging their feet on a DVD re-release???
Great Movie! This is a great movie! Read the book first if you can! I picked it up at Best Buy about 3 years ago for $10 and I'm glad I did with the way the prices are today. I can sell it for $60-$120 used. It's not only a great movie, but apparently an investment!
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