At the same time, he had that sort of desperate look in his eyes.” Winston wants terribly to live, but his definition of what that means changes radically through the movie. Hurt especially stands out.Īs Radford told Little White Lies in a remembrance published in 2017, Hurt was a perfect Winston because he was “so scrawny in those days and so unhealthy looking. The acting is phenomenal throughout, from the chemistry between Hurt and Hamilton to the calmly terrifying Richard Burton as Inner Party member O’Brien. However, there is no Neo coming to save Winston or Julia. Having intimate and passionate sex is a form of liberation in 1984 - an argument the Wachowskis would take up decades later with their rave in The Matrix Reloaded. Acting against the Party’s chastity campaigns, they begin to secretly meet up for sex. Winston, who has been keeping a diary, has his life turned upside down when fellow Outer Party member Julia (Hamilton) starts flirting with him. Intruding on characters at all times, these updates start to feel, well, oppressive. War updates from the never-ending conflicts with Eastasia and Eurasia. What various traitors have done under the influence of Goldstein. Numbers are constantly broadcast in the background. While the audience learns little about the world surrounding Winston, we also learn a lot. Eventually, the Party hopes to develop artificial insemination to the extent that people will no longer have recognizable families, allowing further allegiance to the party. One fellow brother tells Winston that, with the efficiencies of the new doublespeak dictionaries, conversations like the one they are having will soon be functionally impossible. The goal of the Party is to transform the world around it, and the viewer is placed in the midst of that upheaval. The world around Winston isn’t very easy to navigate, which is intentional. Doublespeak isn’t always clear, which is to its point.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing: life in the world of Airstrip One is very confusing.
#George orwell 1984 john hurt movie#
Radford’s movie operates differently, following Winston through a slice of life. One of the Party’s most insidious inventions, doublespeak, is presented on the page for readers to study. In the book, Orwell lays out Winston’s understanding of the world as an Outer Party member, giving him the chance to document various ministries of government and political structures.
He goes to large rallies proclaiming his love of Big Brother, the Party’s always-watching leader, and to other rallies proclaiming his overwhelming hate for the Party’s terrorist enemy Emmanuel Goldstein (John Boswall). He has a few acquaintances who ask if he has any razors he can spare. Winston’s life is a mundane one: he does exercises in the morning on television, where leaders critique his stretching. Shortages of chocolate, for example, are now archived as surplus. Winston has a low-level government job working at the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites old newspapers to keep them consistent with the Party’s current plans. It’s a stunning adaptation that remembers the story at the center of the book and lets it live out in horror.Īt its core, 1984 is a love story between Winston (John Hurt) and Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), who live in Airstrip One, formerly London, in a country now known as Oceania.
Michael Radford’s movie adaptation of Orwell’s book, which hit theaters in 1984, was able to adapt the story without cowering within its massive cultural footprint.
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