Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Winston Smith is a government employee whose job involves the rewriting of history in a manner that casts his fictional country's leaders in a charitable light. His trysts with Julia provide his only measure of enjoyment, but lawmakers frown on the relationship -- and in this closely monitored society, there is no escape from Big Brother.
Michael Radford's adaptation of Orwell's seminal novel is a bleak, faithful, and visually striking film. John Hurt and Richard Burton deliver career-defining performances, with Burton's O'Brien being a masterclass in cold menace. The cinematography by Roger Deakins is genuinely exceptional — desaturated, oppressive, and perfectly evocative of Airstrip One's grim aesthetic. The plot faithfully captures Orwell's themes of totalitarianism and doublethink with harrowing effectiveness. Novelty is constrained somewhat by the film's fidelity to a very well-known source text, making it less singular as a cinematic conception even if superbly executed. The ending, while true to the novel's devastating logic, lands with less emotional impact on screen than on the page — the final capitulation feels slightly rushed cinematically.