Grim, respectful, effective, Michael Radford’s full bore version of the George Orwell classic can’t quite avoid playing out as visualized Cliff Notes; an easy-to-swallow medicinal dosage of dystopia. John Hurt, probably too on-the-nose for Winston Smith, our mid-tier proletariat alter-ego busy with workplace rotary phones & pneumatic tubes, altering history to fit the times. It’s partly a nature of the role, of course, but missing any surprise. Stunt casting might have knocked things off-course in a good way, an arhythmic vibe from a Rock Star (like The Who) or maybe a Monty Python comic. But Radford seems untuned to Orwell’s gallows humor, that nether zone between the puzzling, mirthless illogic of an Edward Lear Nonsense Poem and the yet-to-come existential paradox of Samuel Beckett. Offering lessons instead of dark satire & ‘Party Line’ parody. As O’Brien, Richard Burton, in his last film, gets the dual aspect of confessor & punisher across thru the remains of a dulled surface; and Suzanna Hamilton, Hurt’s sexual muse of resistance, earns the rare distinction of owning up to hairier armpits than her male lover. A cinematic first! Plus Cyril Cusack doing double dystopian duty after appearing in Truffaut’s equally over-modulated FAHRENHEIT 451/’66. (Which makes for a nice DOUBLE-BILL.)
LINK: Ridley Scott’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad for the new Apple Macintosh Computer must have given this film’s producers a jolt, similar enough in tone & design to bring up thoughts of intellectual property theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA
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