Written and Directed by Michael Radford
Produced by Simon Perry
Director of Photography Roger Deakins
Edited by Tom Priestly
Production Designer Allan Cameron
Music by Eurythmics and/or Dominic Muldowney
Starring
John Hurt as Winston
Suzanna Hamilton as Julia
Richard Burton as O’Brien
…
Corruption is the cement that holds this country together. Besides, corrupt people are the first to want love stories.
-Michaelangelo Antonioni, Identification of a Woman (1982)
…
Review by William D. Tucker.
In another timeline, the fate of a totalitarian regime rests on the love between a man and a woman.
That’s not the truth, of course, but you could use that as a marketing hook.
Sure, people who’ve read Orwell’s novel will laugh and roll their eyes, and say, “It’s about the love for Big Brother, stupid!” but many more will not have read the book, and so they will go into the movie version thinking-singing, “It’s the power of love!”
And, well, the movie wouldn’t absolutely contradict any of that . . . and Winston does say “I love you” in the end-oops! My bad . . . Spoiler . . . sorry . . .
Look, you’ve read 1984, right? You can buy it at a Target, for Christ’s sakes, alongside the latest volumes from this or that New Age con artist or The Art of the Deal or some incoherent reactionary screed assembled from rotting pieces of pop psychology and outmoded essentialisms by some pretentious Canadian philosophy professor-what’s his name?
Ah, doesn’t matter.
We’re not here for the shit.
We’re here for the champagne.
1984 . . .
. . . the same year that Godzilla returned from the molten depths of the Earth to terrorize Japan once more . . .
. . . a massive miner’s strike meets violent suppression in Britain . . .
. . . the Union Carbide plant disaster kills 2,500 in Bhopal and creates an ongoing environmental catastrophe . . .
. . . New Zealand is declared a nuclear free zone . . .
. . . first CD players available commercially . . .
. . . Bishop Desmond Tutu wins the Nobel Peace Prize . . .
. . . Ronald Reagan wins a second term as US President . . .
. . . Famine in Ethiopia . . .
. . . William Gibson’s Neuromancer introduces the word ‘cyberspace’ into the pop culture zeitgeist . . .
. . . four independent businessmen repel an extradimensional demonic invasion of New York City . . .
. . . scientists in America and France jointly discover the virus that comes to be known as HIV . . .
. . . Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to go on a space walk . . .
. . . DARPA launches the Strategic Computing Initiative which is a program to create autonomous robotic land vehicles to be used in war . . .
. . . Waseda University invents WABOT-2, a prototype humanoid musician robot . . .
. . . US Congress cuts funding to the Contra death squads who continue to be funded by secret financial support from Saudi Arabia . . .
. . . Apple Computers were going to free us from technocratic corporate oligarchy by creating a rival technocratic corporate oligarchy with killer form factor for a change-look at the Olympian Steroid Babe as she throws a hammer through that stuffy goddamn IBM telescreen . . .
. . . 1984 . . .
. . . in both Orwell’s novel and this film version, we’re not even sure if the year is actually 1984. Our protagonist, Winston, seems convinced that he knows what the actual date is, tho’ even he is afflicted with doubt. Winston works in a warren of offices rewriting history according to the dictates he receives via telescreen. A telescreen is a kind-of old-fashioned tube TV with a camera behind the screen that’s always watching you, and that you cannot turn off unless you are a member of the upper ranks of the Party-the Party being Ingsoc, which is a designation derived from the collapse of the words-and the ideals-of English and Socialism.
Ingsoc, in practice, resembles a nightmarish amalgamation of Stalinism and Fascism and Naziism. But, as an American, I can’t help but see reflections of my own oh-so-wonderful crapitalist society. The de facto caste system based upon (mostly inherited) wealth; a media machine much too cozy with the state that’s all too eager to spit out the infallible metrics of GDP (conveniently ignoring the plight of the working poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and those marginalized because of their immigration status, skin color, sexuality, and/or gender identity) whilst singing the praises of martial virtue attained in endless warfare upon nebulous enemies abroad; and all this while medical costs skyrocket amid epidemic rates of drug addiction, suicide, and eroding faith in public institutions.
Happy endings all the way ‘round!
Orwell’s novel-and this faithful film adaptation-depict a world with no hope. That’s not to say that there’s no escape. You’ve got state-subsidized Victory Gin which will get you good and fucked-up, even if it burns like jet fuel on the way down your gullet. You’ve got the ritualistic denunciations of confessed Thought Criminals broadcast on Jumbotron-style telescreens in massive public arenas-which are like super-angry high school pep rallies.
You can pass your nights dreaming of a future in which the orgasm is physically and neurologically excised from the human being as both an individual and as a species. All people shall exist as either providers of wombs and/or providers of sperm’n’eggs so that the state can perpetuate itself unto Infinity, with no masturbation or other non-productive forms of sexuality allowed.
Oh, yeah-and public executions of prisoners of war. You can lose yourself watching someone get machine gunned at the knees so they bleed out real slow-like.
And if you ever engage in any illegal activities-which is basically anything that Big Brother decides deserves punishment-you get to be tortured for days, weeks, and months until you agree to confess all of your actual crimes-things which you did do-and all the crimes which Big Brother instructs you to confess-things which you did not do-over the national telescreen network, which is a kind of Next-Level Fox News-style form of state media.
Oh, and there’s death! How could I forget that one?
Death’s an escape. You can be shot in the head by an executioner. You can drink yourself to death. You could even perish accidentally while being repeatedly electrocuted by one of Big Brother’s beloved and loving torturers.
Oh, shit! I forgot about the Victory brand cigarettes! State subsidized lung cancer . . . once again, as a selfish All-American Asshole, I keep thinking of my own country-specifically, in this instance, of Big Tobacco’s denials of the carcinogenic effects of their best-selling products . . . I’m also reminded of a video I found on YouTube where a guy talked at length about how chewing tobacco would never give him cancer or any other health problems because he felt very strongly that had to be the case . . . and now I’m thinking about all the religious fundamentalists in my nation that deny evolution . . . deny the scientific consensus on climate change . . . deny COVID-19 . . . are in denial about the results of the 2020 Presidential Election . . . in 1984, the action is confined to an England which is dominated by a single totalitarian political entity-Ingsoc-whereas in America we have . . . The Marketplace of Ideas! Whoever makes the most money gets to purchase the Marketplace and decide which ideas get a come-up! Have the most money and be Big Brother! Sports bar! New Age wellness prattle! All ‘organic’ cookbook recipes! Right-wing tele-pundits authoring nationalist revisions of history! Pro-abstinence parables hidden inside gothic teen vampire romances! How-to manuals focused on regressive ideas of masculinity! Hate rally! Go team! Hoo-ray! Kill ‘em all! Jump for joy!
Yeah, I know. It’s easy-cheap, even-to be a pessimist when everything is absolutely motherfucked beyond recovery. Shame on me for stooping to such negativity of attitude-of outlook, even!
This film version of 1984-which was both produced and released in 1984-works as both a credible science fiction scenario and as an all-too-Orwellian nightmare of pessimism. Orwell constructed his literary output upon the dual bases of powerful moral conviction and the profound disillusionment he experienced as he saw humanity charge boldly into two World Wars which brought about so many wonderful products: death camps, Atomic-Biological-Chemical weapons, and totalitarianism.
Orwell protested all of it even as he lost hope that humanity could legislate or theorize or fight its way out of a final and complete self-obliteration. This film emobdies the Orwellian despair while offering up an extremely detailed production design which extrapolates from 1948 England what the worst possible 1984 England would look and feel like, and the result is a potent example of a retro-future. But not a trendy, steampunky retro-future that Los Angeles actors would want to tabletop roleplay in via YouTube livestreams-this is the Bummer From Way Back-an alcoholic and tubercular writer’s prophecy of fear where the only feasible painkiller is that goddamn Victory Gin that you could probably use to power a tank to flatten a slum full of starving sex workers and manual laborers.
But it is all fine. It will be fine. For all times. If you can just look Big Brother in the face, and say the magic words,
“I love you”
and it’s not like you have to mean ‘em, or that Big Brother’s even concerned that you’re speaking from the heart.
Big Brother, at some level, is a realist. He knows that if you ruthlessly torture someone for months on end to get them to make a public confession they’re probably doing it to make the pain stop.
But Big Brother is as fair as they come.
You see, everybody’s been through the ringer in 1984. Your number’s come up, that’s all.
Even the torturers were tortured once upon a time.
And history’s been re-written so many times, now-who knows what’s real?
How do you even know what today’s date is?
Even if your dayjob’s re-writing all the history books . . . how many times were they re-written before you got rotated into position, hm?
You’ve got a box that’s supposed to be a jigsaw puzzle of a picture of an old church. You open the box, and you start fucking around with all the pieces . . . only to find they’re all pieces from different puzzles of pictures of who knows how many different old churches . . . you’ve basically got just enough to know . . . that you’re totally defeated. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the sensation that your sin wasn’t trying to solve the puzzle-your sin was that you thought there was a puzzle you could solve in the first place.
Nope.
Just a bunch of random crap rattling around in a box. However, for your deductive efforts you shall be rewarded with a mandatory thought reform period. Congratulations.
What if Orwell had drank less? What if he had access to cognitive behavioral therapy? What if he hadn’t caught TB? Would he have been more of an optimist? Would we have accepted a more hopeful vision? Or does Orwell’s personal despair give us all a way out of trying to make things work-a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were, hmm?
1984 exists, possibly, as a challenge from a man writing well beyond hope.
Do we have what it takes to live in reality without white supremacy, slavery, hyper-competitiveness, social stratification, colonialism, fanatical systems of belief, empire, propaganda, and war eternal?
Orwell tells us that history isn’t on our side.
But, you know, maybe, like . . . Christmas cheer will yet save us?
Or, like, I dunno . . . the Protestant Work Ethic?
How about . . . a really-I mean really terrific after dinner speaker-like, uh, like totally Toastmasters level of quality-that could do the job, couldn’t it?
Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! I know! I know! Ooo! Teacher! Teacher! Over here! Me! Yes!
I got it. If I show up at my local open mic stand-up comedy show, and, like, do just, you know, like a total slayer of a five minute set-eh? That’s got to move the needle, comrade! I could even get laid! Humor’s sexy, y’know?
Ahhh . . . yeah . . . okay . . .
I’m spitballing here.
Don’t look at me like that!
You’re reading a blogspot blog, genius, and you’re looking for the next-level breakthrough on the problems articulated by Orwell?
Like, Christ-humping fucknuts, people-whaddaya want from me?!
(Shrugs elaborately)
That’s all I got.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have multiple glass tubs of nacho cheese to microwave and consume one after the other, so, if you wouldn’t mind . . .
(Gives you little flicky waves of his hands to indicate ‘get the fuck out’)
Alone at last . . .
(Redefines ‘abject’ as he abuses his body with a nacho cheese orgy-glut)
