Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

The 1984 film version of George Orwell's legendary dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, makes the boast in a 'title card' at the end of the movie that is was filmed in London and environs during the months of April-June 1984, the same time and place in which the novel is set. Now this isn't exactly necessary, but neat as trivia, and I think it captures the film makers desire that the film serve more or less as the definitive picturization of the novel, and I suppose it is. That being said, any attempt to put Nineteen Eighty-Four on film can't help but be a mere simulacrum of Orwell's indefatigable novel. So much of the power of Nineteen Eighty-Four's story is that it is told as a novel, that it can present the interior of the protagonists (in this case Winston Smith) mind in a way that can not be communicated in film. The movie also lacks the ability to truly present the in-world essays on Newspeak and Goldstein's book, which are among my favorite parts of the work. Still if this movie does nothing more then to perhaps interest viewers in reading the book then it has done its job.

The movie does do a number of things right, from the propaganda sequences at the three-minutes hate, to the decaying streets of Airstrip One. Even the two leads John Hurt as Winston Smith and Suzanna Hamilton as Julia look pretty much the way you'd imagine those characters to look, though full discloser since I first read the book in the mid-1990's I pictured Julia as Pig Stye actress Liz Vassey (and no I never watched Pig Sty but she made an impression from the commercials). Richard Burton in his last film role is a pretty good O'Brian, his line reading conveys a sense of underplayed, bureaucratic, creepiness masked as benignancy. I won't say much about the plot because you should know it, save that the film does manage to cover most of the high points of the novel. I saw the edited broadcast TV version and from it you can tell that the unedited version is mildly racy. In all about as good as a film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four can be. ***