7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In a totalitarian future society, a man, whose daily work is re-writing history, tries to rebel by falling in love.
Starring: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack, Gregor FisherDrama | 100% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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