Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future

 1984 (1984)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

George Orwell is an author who understood all too well how totalitarian regimes work. His famous novel "1984" did not see the future as much as it saw how the 1940's would be seen as the past and the future. When his novel was published in 1949, it was prescient to those who knew all too well about the extinguished Nazi regime yet no one could've anticipated how much of the novel was beyond sardonic and became spookily real. Naturally there was also Stalin's Russia and there is no doubt that the images he conjured in our collective imagination have become eerily prescient in 2022 and, ultimately, ever since the book was published. Director Michael Radford's disturbing, thought-provoking version of Orwell's book is the last we might ever see of this book and that is fine by me. It may be the only time we see how that world visually was so clinically unhealthy - such a grayish, crumbling world can only allow conformity.

John Hurt is the frail-looking Winston Smith who works for the Ministry of Truth, a dingy-looking building where he effectively rewrites history in newspaper articles to befit the current climate of war taking place. It is what is referred to as Newspeak, rebranding Oldspeak by deleting and/or rephrasing headlines and replacing pictures of the current Unpersons with new persons. Any other discarded notes are destroyed by throwing them through ducts that lead to a furnace. Interestingly, we get the sole shot in the whole movie where we see Winston at his desk from the point-of-view of Big Brother - the surveillance is omnipresent as every screen has a still image of Big Brother. In this fictional land of a bombed-out, oppressive place known as Oceania, the workers at the Ministry of Truth all wear faded blue uniforms. They all live in their own eroded flats that look torn apart, and they all drink the same Victory gin that makes one belch and smoke the same Victory cigarettes. The lift at the flats barely ever works so everyone is forced to use the stairs. All Oceania residents are practically automatons in this totalitarian society as they attend rallies with giant dual screens of Party members showing death and destruction in war with Eurasia and East Asia. They are all malleable and all scream in unison at the enemies (one is the opposition leader of the Brotherhood known as Emmanuel Goldstein) and then cross their arms singing the regime's anthem (one can't escape thinking this hailing of their leader as an obvious echo of the Nazi salute). 

Winston is not a believer in the Party or the Outer Party he's part of - he buys a diary book and writes his criticisms in a far corner of his room so as not to be seen by the Big Brother monitor. He only pretends to be a Party supporter and is too much of an intellectual, which would make him guilty of Thoughtcrime. He eyes a seeming revolutionary or presumed spy of the Outer Party, Julia (a startling performance by Suzanna Hamilton), and they decide to have a love affair despite the regime's restrictions on sex and just about everything having to do with being human. 

Not unlike Orwell's dystopian novel, "1984" is a tough film to absorb and it is so relentlessly (and purposely) bleak that it may be even tougher to sit still for it. I've seen it now three times and this last time was a bit of an ordeal, mostly due to witnessing Winston's torture by the cruel O'Brien (2+2=5 became numbers that petrified me through its constant repetition and questioning by O'Brien). Of course, it is meant to be an ordeal because most of the film (and the book) revolves around being inside Winston's mind. In that fragile spirit of a person seeking individuality and a return to humanism, John Hurt is the perfect Winston Smith. Every line of dialogue spoken and every piece of narration is given maximum gravity in ways only John Hurt could have only mustered. I also love Suzanna Hamilton's work here as a brave Julia, often wearing a scarlet sash as in the book, who is not ready to give up the fight. Richard Burton, in his last role, is positively chilling as O'Brien, an Inner Party member who implements torturing those who violate the laws and criticize the regime. One torturous device in room 101 has to do with rats in a cage and I will leave it at that. 

The underlying theme is you cannot have sex or have an orgasm or have any love for anything or anyone other than Big Brother and the totalitarian regime. The last line of "1984," and expressed without dialogue in the book, is "I love you" uttered without a hint of irony by Winston. This is not directed to Julia or anyone other than Big Brother. Winston's brainwashed and accepting of anything Big Brother says or does. That's love in a cruel, odd way.