csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (csdf) (06/17/85)
In article <2107@ut-sally.UUCP> kelvin@ut-sally.UUCP (Kelvin Thompson) writes: > > > _1984_ > > by Kelvin Thompson > > _1984_ is a bad, utterly depressing, anti-humanist movie. The producer > of the movie has claimed that at its heart the movie is a love story, but > in truth it is a relentless attack on the nobility of the human > condition. > > To be sure, the plot of the movie does have the broad outline of a love > story. A man, John Hurt (_The_Elephant_Man_, _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_), > meets a woman, played by an unknown British actress, and they embark on a > difficult relationship. Unfortunately, the "difficulty" in their > relationship is that they live in a futuristic, totalitarian society > which forbids love. (It is unfathomable why the movie is entitled > _1984_, when it is so obviously set in the future.) > Certainly there is nothing wrong with telling a story about forbidden > love (consider Zeffirelli's _Romeo_and_Juliet_), but _1984_ relegates the > love story to a secondary status, spending more time depicting the > dehumanizing influences of the society. The viewer can take only so many > of these scenes -- involving dingy surroundings, tired, gray workers, and > discussions of the decimation of history and language -- before he gets > bogged down in a sense of utter despair, hardly the mood a romance is > supposed to engender. This is what the movie is about, nitwit. The book by George Orwell is a comment on the human condition and how society can dehumanize it. It is also a comment on the way he percieved Russian society after the revolution. The movie is an amazing and captavating conversion of the book capturing all the moods and subtlties amazingly. The book, and the movie, point out that nobody is really sure what year it is anymore. You are right that it's not really a love story, but it wasn't supposed to be. I also thought you might be interested to know that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. > And all that is before the movie gets *really* depressing. Eventually > the lovers are caught and carted off to prison (ironically called the > "Ministry of Love"). The audience never finds out exactly what happens > to the woman, but we see all too clearly what Hurt undergoes. It turns > out that the authorities don't merely want to make Hurt pay for his "sex > crime," or to make him publicly repudiate it, they want him to actually > loathe the love he felt for the woman. This calls for especially extreme > torture, and the audience sees every second of it. The torture scenes are picnics compares to "Rambo". The point that Orwell makes here is really amazing: Hurt's character believes that he will always be free as long as he can control his feelings, but Orwell shows how society can change even those. > These prison scenes also give the writers a chance to really cut loose > with their anti-humanist, Skinnerian philosophy. Between tortures Hurt > and his jailer, the late Richard Burton (_The_Wild_Geese_), talk about > the society they live in, and Hurt loses every debate. Time and time > again Hurt raises a point about love or kindness or hope, Burton bats it > down, and writers choose not to have Hurt raise a counter point. > Finally, after a particularly brutal torture (which the viewer is all but > forced to look away from) Hurt gives in and truly renounces his love for > the girl. > > The final scene removes any remaining doubt that this might be even a > tragic romance. The two former lovers, freed after their > "rehabilitation," meet. They are distant, indifferent to one another, > and after trading inanities they go their separate ways. Finally, in his > closing lines, Hurt proclaims that his love has shifted to Big Brother, > the leader of the entirely un-romantic society he lives in. The final > hope for tenderness has received its final kick in the face. You hit the nail on the head, didn't you? Too bad they didn't get Brooke Shields (_Endless_Love_, _The_Blue_Lagoon_) to play the woman. That would have made it more spicy. Perhaps a wet-T-shirt contest scene is called for to save this "un-romantic" film. 1984 was a brilliant, well-directed film and food for thought. Read a book, Thompson! -- Charles Forsythe CSDF@MIT-VAX.ARPA "Safe for now...."