It is definitely about authoritarianism and totalitarianism but with the interesting twist that instead of treated as interchangeable cogs in the machinery the process is much more insidious and personally focused with everyone is being urged to 'play their part' in the running of the society (whilst still remaining interchangeable and 'disappearable' on an individual level). The power structures are in the process of being internalised: dictionaries are having their 'flowery' poetic words discarded in favour of ever dwindling amounts of practical compound words; children are encouraged to inform on their parents; the television screen is not a one way interaction any more, is unable to be turned off and everyone watches the same few shows collectively (like Britain's Got Talent! or a Marvel movie!). News is manufactured to order with the conceit that nobody remembers the news from yesterday anyway, so any new story is possible. The power of 1984 is that you can apply it to anything that comes after it from Mao's China and the Little Red Book to Thatcher's "there's no such thing as society" to Trump's 'fake news'! Even 'body fascism' of the state getting more involved in the mechanics of your body and monitoring everything that you say, watch and eat, perhaps more for their benefit than for your own health. And it still has weird resonances today: for example that
recent home cycling advert is astoundingly unaware of how uncomfortably (and presumably unintentionally?) it is reminiscent of
a certain exercise scene in the film!
Its an excellent film, though unavoidably the source material has been such a big influence on many dystopian sci-fi films both before and since (Alphaville, Brazil, THX-1138, that Fifteen Million Merits episode of Black Mirror) that have all taken the basic material and added a new twist on it whilst this adaptation is relatively straight forward. Though that makes it perhaps all the necessary, as well as the bleakest version of any: at least those other films allowed for some form of escape. No car chase, even a stunted one based on economic cost-benefit analysis here (which is where THX-1138 is at its best, as money matters do not really factor into 1984 and they form the whole basis of the finale of the Lucas film!) before stumbling out of your shackles to an uncertain future in 1984. No escape even into your own head, as it is your own head that is the 'threat' to the society that needs to be dealt with. (Your own freedom of having your own thoughts about your situation; your allegiances with others that may sustain you through the hardest time; your inherited belief systems that suggest a brighter or darker future ahead to strive for or against; the common sense knowledge of how the world works and that 2+2=4)
It is not enough that you submit in public but might think differently in private, but that you do not have any existence at all outside of the one assigned to you. And that allows your existence to change entirely depending on the whims of others.
It is perhaps John Hurt's finest role. Suzanna Hamilton is amazing too, and of course Richard Burton has the perfect mix of gruff father and dispassionate bureaucrat as he breaks Winston (and the structure of society) down and re-builds him in the final section.
