Major Symbols: Big Brother, the glass paperweight, St. Plot: Three parts, linear narrative structure Obviously 1984 is long since gone bye-bye, but 2084 or 2054? Oppression can always come as long as people desire self-centered power and the masses don't pay close attention.Major Thematic Elements: Perils of totalitarianism, psychological and physical control/manipulation, censoring of information and history, advanced technology, restrictions on language to control and manipulate, loyalty and resistance to power, revolution and independence, identityĮxposition: Explanation of Big Brother and how the new government regime has altered Winston’s life in drastic ways With that as a foundation, this really is a good cinematic portrayal, and of a story that is still relevant and not impossible to come to pass. In summary, read the book if you haven't (either before or after seeing the film) to get a complete overview of the author's vision. The movie is effective by being more ambiguous than the book, but I tend to think maybe it is too ambiguous. In this case though, I think a little may have helped, not necessarily wall-to-wall, but sparingly used. For example: Who/Where exactly is Oceania? How did the countries go from their current political state to the envisioned one? Why do the people gather in mass and scream passionate hateful exclamations at the screen? What exactly does Winston actually do? Who are the proles? I praise movies that can effectively tell a story without means of voice-over, a much overused device in films. I think if I were ignorant of the story, there are too many things that would confuse me in this film which the book seems to go out of its way to explain. A good adaptation is faithful to the essentials of a story but makes necessary changes so that it not only becomes cinematic, yet also becomes something that a viewer unfamiliar with the source material can understand.
There is a theory I once heard and agree with: the closer an adaptation is to the source, the more necessary it is to read the source.
The flaw in the film, for me, is that I felt like I only enjoyed and understood this movie BECAUSE I had read the book already. This film is dark and uncompromising, and follows many of the dialogs verbatim from the book. The casting, set design, and atmosphere are all right on the mark for how I envisioned them during reading the book. George Orwell's literary masterpiece "1984" is presented with amazing accuracy and detail in this version filmed during the very months of the author's vision.
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