Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

1984 Blu-ray Movie Review

Maybe it's time for you to be watching Big Brother.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 29, 2015

When I was growing up one of my older sisters had an old paperback edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four that had an illustration of a grimacing and (to a very young boy as I was) monster like Big Brother on the cover. That art in turn led me to believe as a child that George Orwell’s masterpiece was indeed some kind of Frankenstein story, albeit one placed in the (then) future. Perhaps because of that childhood association, I never got around to actually reading Orwell’s book until I was in high school, when it was assigned as part of an overall look not just at Orwell, but other dystopian visions like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It was then that I realized that Orwell was, at least somewhat like Mary Shelley, writing about a “monster” Man had made, though one obviously different from the animated corpse at the center of Shelley’s horror novel. Orwell famously reversed the final digits of 1948, the year he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, to come up with the time setting for his chilling scrying of a totalitarian society where the individual has been subsumed by the cogs of a military industrial complex which seeks to keep the planet in a constant state of turmoil. Orwell’s formulations may have seemed positively outlandish in the mid- to late forties when they first appeared, but seen now through the prism of a world dealing with the after effects of various bouts of terrorism, some of Orwell’s “predictions” seem positively prophetic. In Orwell’s “future” society, the government is an all knowing, all seeing entity which has the ability to peek into the most minute details of its citizens’ lives. The media is a tool of the government, dutifully rewriting “history” at a moment’s notice to further propagandize that same citizenry. In the center of this whirlwind is hapless Winston Smith (John Hurt), a low level government functionary who finds himself at the center of a sociopolitical maelstrom when he dares to defy convention and think for himself as well as to commit the unpardonable sin of falling in love.

Younger readers and/or viewers especially who may think that entries like The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner are the be-all end-all of dystopian works of fiction may want to either visit or revisit Orwell’s saga, for while at least some elements in either the Suzanne Collins or James Dashner franchises are postively outlandish, what instantly strikes most who come to the tale of Winston and Big Brother is how completely plausible it all seems. Winston is a citizen in Oceania, a kind of “international” aggregation of what were once separate entities. While for all intents and purposes Winston’s corner of Oceania might be considered to be England (called Airstrip One here, one of many passing references to a world focused on combat), there’s an ecumenical flavor to much of Orwell’s postulation that makes the setting somewhat more amorphous.

Winston is employed at the Ministry of Truth, which in the “Newspeak” of this society means pretty much the opposite of what one might think. The Ministry of Truth is tasked with propaganda efforts, some of which entail literally rewriting history to make it conform to whatever is currently held to be—well, “true.” The entire citizenry of Oceania is kept in line courtesy of the Thought Police and its perhaps fictional totem, Big Brother, but that doesn’t stop Winston from engaging in what is considered “criminal activity,” namely free thinking and (even worse) writing down those thoughts as part of a journal. Winston’s seemingly numb emotional state actually masks a rather febrile interior emotional world, and when he’s approached by Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), unexpected sparks fly, leading to a dangerous love affair.

It’s well nigh impossible to see this mounting of Nineteen Eighty-Four without thinking of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, an entry which appeared just a few months after this outing did, but which went on to perhaps more of a cult shelf life. Both films exploit a retro production design that (to cite just a couple of examples) utilize “ancient” technologies like cathode ray tubes and rotary telephones in order to detail the less than glamorous accoutrements the supposedly beneficent powers in each film ostensibly offer to their citizens. Of course Gilliam’s film is a kind of “take” on Orwellian premises, though Nineteen Eighty-Four is decidedly bleaker than Brazil, with none of the whimsical (if oft times disturbing) imagery that gave Gilliam’s film such a distinctive tone.

That very bleakness actually helps Nineteen Eighty-Four to achieve some visceral emotional intensity as it moves into its harrowing end game, when Winston is “rehabilitated” by functionary O’Brien (Richard Burton in his last film role). The whole scale destruction of Winston’s ego is rendered in an almost palpable manner, giving the final sequence with a quasi-lobotomized Winston and Julia all the more emotional heft.

1984 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Director Michael Radford and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins offer an intentionally desaturated environment here which tends to make things like flesh tones look blanched, and which actually tends to highlight the grain field, making it appeal relatively thick and even swarthy at times. When Winston and Julia get out into the countryside, the palette warms up at least a little, though even here things look tamped down and not especially vivid (again, no doubt an intentional choice). Close-ups offer excellent fine detail (see screenshots 1 and 3 for two good examples), though there are occasional deficits in shadow detail in scenes where the characters are in dimly lit interior environments. Elements are in good shape, with only very minor age related issues like minimal dirt showing up.

1984 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Nineteen Eighty-Four courted a bit of controversy back in the day when it was released with a score featuring tunes by Eurythmics, a choice director Michael Radford went on the record as lambasting, stating he much preferred the more traditional orchestral score by Dominic Muldowney. Both of these soundtracks are offered in DTS-HD Master Audio Mono, with the disc authored to default to the Muldowney score, the preferred score of the director. The music is the obvious chief difference between these two tracks, though it's interesting to note that the Muldowney cues retained in the Eurythmics version are often mixed far further down than in the main Muldowney version. Otherwise, both tracks offer excellent fidelity within an obviously narrow soundfield. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly and clearly and with excellent prioritization.

1984 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (480p; 2:21)


• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (1080p; 2:06)


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and is the Eurythmics iteration of the score.

Though they're not listed as actual supplements, it's worth noting again that this release contains both of the soundtracks the film had, per the information discussed above in the Audio section of the review. Each is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio mono.

1984 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

So much of Orwell's formulation has already entered the public lexicon that Nineteen Eighty-Four plays less like prognostication and more like an almost verité depiction of the way things already are. This version of Orwell's tale is appropriately austere, but surprisingly its emotional tenor is actually nicely full blooded and provides the film with a devastating component that is ultimately quite touching. This Twilight TIme release is a little light in the supplements department, but it's commendable that both soundtracks for the film have been included. Recommended.