1984 ESSAY
Murtaza, Page #1
Faiza Murtaza
Cosmin Decuseara
ENG3U
Thursday December 19th, 2013
1984
Book vs. Movie
History is being lost, Free will is being abolished by the falsification of history records, love is being outlawed and the invasion of their privacy, Telescreens, Big Brother, a world watched over and perfected. George Orwell created this world, quite hard to portray visually, setting a very dark and unwanted setting in which the dystopia of totalitarian surveillance and prevention of state is shown . Turning a good book into a good film in it’s whole glory isn’t as easy as it sounds . Michael Radford’s attempt to match Orwell’s descriptions of his exceptional book “1984” was indeed an impressive layout. The movie was a good adaptation to George Orwell’s novel . This is shown through the setting , characterization , and the themesof the book.
Radford’s portrayal of George Orwell’s tense and petrifying setting was phenomenon and one of a kind masterpiece. Everything seemed to match the author’s descriptions word for word. Radford used cinematic filming techniques to really capture the way he wanted the movie to be seen. It is a gloomy, lifeless movie that uses allot of panoramic shots, e.g. gray skies, run down building, and there was always a picture of big brothers face, to tell the viewer that the people in the movie are living in a very restricted world. Their city looked like it was dumped with garbage and had no life in it, as if living creatures were now robotic. Infact both the movie and book showed, how the super-
Murtaza, Page #2 country of Oceania is in a constant state of war, and bomb explosions are ordinary. The living conditions are poor, with the buildings dilapidated, the food synthetic and rationed out, the wages low, and the clothing shoddy. No one can expect privacy anywhere, because there’s a telescreen (that monitors behavior visually and audibly) in almost every room. This was certainly a setting to make a
Faiza Murtaza
Cosmin Decuseara
ENG3U
Thursday December 19th, 2013
1984
Book vs. Movie
History is being lost, Free will is being abolished by the falsification of history records, love is being outlawed and the invasion of their privacy, Telescreens, Big Brother, a world watched over and perfected. George Orwell created this world, quite hard to portray visually, setting a very dark and unwanted setting in which the dystopia of totalitarian surveillance and prevention of state is shown . Turning a good book into a good film in it’s whole glory isn’t as easy as it sounds . Michael Radford’s attempt to match Orwell’s descriptions of his exceptional book “1984” was indeed an impressive layout. The movie was a good adaptation to George Orwell’s novel . This is shown through the setting , characterization , and the themesof the book.
Radford’s portrayal of George Orwell’s tense and petrifying setting was phenomenon and one of a kind masterpiece. Everything seemed to match the author’s descriptions word for word. Radford used cinematic filming techniques to really capture the way he wanted the movie to be seen. It is a gloomy, lifeless movie that uses allot of panoramic shots, e.g. gray skies, run down building, and there was always a picture of big brothers face, to tell the viewer that the people in the movie are living in a very restricted world. Their city looked like it was dumped with garbage and had no life in it, as if living creatures were now robotic. Infact both the movie and book showed, how the super-
Murtaza, Page #2 country of Oceania is in a constant state of war, and bomb explosions are ordinary. The living conditions are poor, with the buildings dilapidated, the food synthetic and rationed out, the wages low, and the clothing shoddy. No one can expect privacy anywhere, because there’s a telescreen (that monitors behavior visually and audibly) in almost every room. This was certainly a setting to make a
Citations: : 1.) Orwell, George, 1984.Ed.Erich Fromm. New York: Haircourt, 1949 2.) N.p.. Web. 19 Dec 2013. . 3.) Web. http://www.hyperink.com/Major-Themes-b1770a14 4.) Web. http://www.shmoop.com/1984/themes.html