Wednesday, May 30, 2012

1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

The Tonnina is offering one more Dystopian Review!  This is actually a review of both the movie and the book, 1984.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
Year: 1984
Country: UK
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian
Director: Michael Radford
Stars: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack







1984
Year: 1949
Country: UK
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Political Fiction
Author: George Orwell
Characters: Winston Smith, Julia, Big Brother, O'Brien, Goldstein



The movie follows the book quite well, it skips around and leaves out a few not so critical parts in the story, but that's okay.  It tells the important parts of this crazy love tale/political oppression story.
The story is set in 1984, in Oceania, a country run by a totalitarian government.  Apparently Oceania used to be the Americas, Austraila, Southern Africa, and the UK, and the main character, Winston Smith (Played by John hurt in the film) even recalls Old London at some points in the story.  Oceania is always at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia.  Always at war with one and always an ally with the other.  It's a flip flop, back and forth war and Oceania seems to be stuck in the middle of it.  Ingsoc is the political ideology of the government here in Oceania.  There are telescreens in every home, shop, and work place.  These Telesceens allow Big Brother of Ignsoc (English Socialism in Newspeak) to be ever vigilant and watch his people working, living, and hating Goldstein the traitor.  You must love Big Brother and hate Goldstein.  Goldstein wanted to break up the totalitarian government, and had many people working for him to do so.  It didn't work out though and now the whole country is against Goldstein; He is a traitor.
It's a map! Yay! Now we can see the countries...
Winston's job is quite simple, he is a writer.  He writes what Big Brother tells him to and he fixes mistakes.  Even mistakes that were made years ago.  One example the book and movie both use is that Big Brother said there was to be no reduction in chocolate rations for the year of 1984.  Well, they needed to reduce it.  To make it sound pleasant, Winston re-writes the news story as the chocolate rations were at 20 grams and now they are going up to 25 when in reality they were at 30 grams and are now going down to 25.  This doctoring of documents is also used to keep the names of unpersons, those who've been arrested and disposed of, out of the news.  We only want current living people to be in the news, books, and stories.
Speaking of news, books and stories, have you heard of the new 10th edition of Newspeak?  It's this thick, but the 11th edition will be thinner.  More words are being destroyed each day!  Why do you need so many words to describe when something is bad when you can just say it's ungood?
Oh, it appears the 11th edition is out!
Alright so back to the review.  I read part one of the book and the very first few pages of part two.  I didn't finish it in time to review just the book for Dystopian month, but I really wanted to so I watched the film.  The book goes into so much greater detail than the movie, but then, that's what books are supposed to do.  The movie can actually show you what's happening.
Here's a quick break down of how the story is played out: Winston is wanting to know about the world before the war started.  He barely remembers it since he was very young when the war started.  He knows he can get arrested for this, it's called Thoughtcrime and he will be taken away.  He's sure of it.  Winston has this diary that he got from an antiques shop and he writes in it, a lot.  He figures he'll die because he's written down his thoughts and they will say he's committed thoughtcrime.  He wanders back to the shop and buys a glass paperweight that has a piece of coral in it... then he learns of a room the shopkeep has upstairs.  Winston toys with the idea of living there for a moment but thinks he better not.  He sees this brown haired girl as he is trying to get home and Winston recognizes her as a woman he works with.  Winston bumps into this woman the next day at work, she passes him a note claiming she loves him.  He's taken aback because he thought she was working for the thought police.  Julia, played by Suzanna Hamilton, is a member of the Junior Anti-Sex league.  She wears their red sash over her blue cover-alls.  Winston has a dream (in the book) about seeing her naked, he believes she's never been with a man because she's a part of the JASL.  They eventually get together in the antique shop room for let.  There's no telescreen in there so they can talk about anything they wish and do whatever they wish.  Of course Winston and Julia have relations and talk about the oppression.  Eventually they are caught and then there are torture scenes and boy does it get creepy!  In the end, Winston submits to Big Brother and is let go, but only after he confesses to his crimes, even crimes he didn't commit.  At the very end, Julia and Winston meet again and try to apologize but they realized that when you are tortured, all you care about is your life.  You couldn't care less about the other person so long as you get to live.  Which is sad, because when they were hiding out in the room to let, Winston expressed his fear of "them" having control over your emotions.
True Love? Yeah, until Big Brother starts torturing you.
The movie is good, it's older, but it's good.  It's actually not as boring as I thought it might be.  It has great cinematography and stayed very true to the important parts of the book.  The book is a wonderfully wordy read.  I've been at it for over a month and still haven't finished it, it's rather long, but part of that is my fault.  I should read more often than I do.  I will warn that there is full frontal female nudity and torture in the movie, so if you aren't comfortable with that, you might want to stick to the book... I've not read that far into it, so the book may be just as bad.
There are a few things I had problems with in the movie.  They call everyone Brother or Sister in the movie, but in the book they are to call everyone Comrade.  I like the Comrade better.  I also thought Winston looked to old in the movie.  John Hurt looks an awful lot like David Bowie. In my head he looked younger, but that could just be how I'm interpreting him... I also thought Julia would have longer hair.  But again, that's just my imagination.

So check out either the movie or the book or be like me and check them both out; I enjoyed them both!!  I got my book at Hastings and watched the film on Netflix!

OH and PS,

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