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dwk wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 3:07 pm Beaver

Literally, def NSFW

At least she's not 14 this time.

Oh shit. I didnt even pay attention to the patreon exclusive caps. Sorry.

a few questions from a neophyte :

I think that it's one of John Hurt's best role. At last, contrary to Elephant Man's he has the lead role, but without "makeup". And Richard Burton is amazing too. Impressive to say the least. Like all the cast.

Did Terry Gilliam mention in a interview specifically this movie for the design of the desks office and "vintage" machine with the "pneumatics" tubes for Brazil's design ? (I don't know if at that time (Brazil was released in 1986) Terry already started to work on it (which you can see in François Truffaut "Baisers Volés" aka "Stolen Kisses"- those were the days in Paris for sending a letter in a day) ?

was Pink Floyd's famous cover of "Animals" (Roger Waters could have taken 1984 as a concept, instead he did use George Orwell for this mythic Pink Floyd album).
The famous cover of "Animals" by Hypgnosis features the Battersea Power Station. They could have used some footage taken during the shouting of the cover, when the inflatable Pigs was "missing in action" and caused troubled with the airports.
During the "Children Of Men", the reference to "Animals" Pink Floyd album cover is obvious because they had a flying Pig (with 3D effect it's easy).

Do you have in mind some other S-F movies which would use the Battersea Power Station ? I think that 1984 was the first ? I didn't have the Criterion blu-ray, so I don't know if there is an interview or comment about this.


When I saw the Eurythmics credited for the soundtrack, I was expecting something less discreet (we have some "pulsating" soundtrack which could remind a little bit Tangerine Dream). At that time Annie Lenox was still with the band, and her voice (I think it's her voice) has been mixed discreetly.
Wasn't the song "Sexcime" by Eurythmics planned to be a part of the soundtrack of this movie ? was it an outtake or written later after the movie soundtrack experience ? (I remember that during this song, the word "nineteen and eighty four" was spoken several times). I did not spot an instrumental or embryonic version of "Sexcrime" in "1984" movie, but they made an obvious link with this movie and the book because they called this song "For the love of Big Brother".

Rupert Pupkin wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:37 amDid Terry Gilliam mention in a interview specifically this movie for the design of the desks office and "vintage" machine with the "pneumatics" tubes for Brazil's design ? (I don't know if at that time (Brazil was released in 1986) Terry already started to work on it (which you can see in François Truffaut "Baisers Volés" aka "Stolen Kisses"- those were the days in Paris for sending a letter in a day) ?

The bulk of Brazil's production happened from November 1983 to February 1984, and Radford's 1984 didn't come out until December of that year, so Gilliam wouldn't have been influenced by Radford's film. The only effect the Radford film might have had on Brazil is that one of Gilliam's earlier titles for his film was "1984½", which Gilliam felt he couldn't use once 1984 went into production. He may not have ended up using that title anyway, though, as the Ary Barroso song was part of his plan since its earliest conception.

I'm glad to see 1984 added to the collection as I think it's criminally underrated. John Hurt is the perfect Winston Smith - all skin and bone and that weary old man's voice - and Richard Burton is great as O'Brien - the personification of cynicism. I'll never forget when Smith, who has been captured by the Thought Police, exclaims upon seeing O'Brien, "They got you too!" And Burton's delivery is chilling when he replies, "Oh, they got me a long time ago." Roger Deakins gives the film just the right look too.

Kirkinson wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 6:26 am

Rupert Pupkin wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:37 amDid Terry Gilliam mention in a interview specifically this movie for the design of the desks office and "vintage" machine with the "pneumatics" tubes for Brazil's design ? (I don't know if at that time (Brazil was released in 1986) Terry already started to work on it (which you can see in François Truffaut "Baisers Volés" aka "Stolen Kisses"- those were the days in Paris for sending a letter in a day) ?

The bulk of Brazil's production happened from November 1983 to February 1984, and Radford's 1984 didn't come out until December of that year, so Gilliam wouldn't have been influenced by Radford's film. The only effect the Radford film might have had on Brazil is that one of Gilliam's earlier titles for his film was "1984½", which Gilliam felt he couldn't use once 1984 went into production. He may not have ended up using that title anyway, though, as the Ary Barroso song was part of his plan since its earliest conception.

In the supplements for Brazil, Gilliam stresses that he hadn't read 1984 when he made his film. Even though he was referring to the book, he was making the point that the material had no direct influence on him because he was unfamiliar with it (outside of what's widely known in the public consciousness) so I would imagine that unfamiliarity would extend to the film adaptation as well.

Fortisquince wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:25 pmI'm glad to see 1984 added to the collection as I think it's criminally underrated. John Hurt is the perfect Winston Smith - all skin and bone and that weary old man's voice - and Richard Burton is great as O'Brien - the personification of cynicism. I'll never forget when Smith, who has been captured by the Thought Police, exclaims upon seeing O'Brien, "They got you too!" And Burton's delivery is chilling when he replies, "Oh, they got me a long time ago." Roger Deakins gives the film just the right look too.

One of the things that I often think about when I watch the film is to try and figure out the moment when Winston 'exposes' himself. Has he always been under suspicion from even visiting the prole areas that we see in the flashback, or from buying that coral trinket, or was it only when he rented the room (and the knowledge that it was under surveillance all that time completely destroys the safe haven in restrospect), or was it after he tentatively approached O'Brien the first time? So many moments when Winston, almost unwittingly, exposed his subversive behaviours to the watching authorities even when trying to take all the possible precautions against it.

Maybe it is just because we only see Julia through Winston's eyes, so she is mysterious at the beginning and almost totally wiped away from the final tortuous act of the film, but while I like to play where Winston's moment of crossing the rubicon occurs, I get the impression that Julia only got caught because of Winston bringing her to the room and her attraction to him overcoming the extreme caution of a member of a younger generation who has only ever known a life under surveillance and has adapted to that constant pressure as a norm 'better' than Winston has. That of course makes her appearance in the room both a wonderful moment of the couple being able to be together (because she actually shows that she does have feelings for Winston, at least in a more optimistic interpretation of the situation) and the ultimate tragedy of the couple's inevitable destruction from that moment on as well.

I watched it last night and my conclusion was that Winston exposed himself when he bought the notebook long before the events of the film begin.

Given that the room itself is a trap. That the picture and the old mans knowledge of the nursery rhyme that goes with the picture are both a trap, and that Julia also has knowledge of the nursery rhyme (which was a trap), and that Julia brings inner circle contraband to the room, to further ensnare Winston in even more illicit behavior, and that Julia set up the ex London excursion so adroitly, it all seems to suggest that Julia is part of a long con against Winston from before the beginning.

I never read the book, since it was a required reading type book but it never showed up on a syllabus (nor brave new world, oddly) but I thought the film was incredibly tremendous, cinematography, acting, story, all so stunningly done. It reminded me a lot of “the confession” which I watched earlier this year and which was a lot scarier and more intense, of course.

Speaking of the cinematography, Deakens off handedly mentions a Miyagawa lensed picture that used a special silver development chemistry to achieve a similar desaturates look. Anyone know what film that was?

movielocke wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 10:56 pmSpeaking of the cinematography, Deakens off handedly mentions a Miyagawa lensed picture that used a special silver development chemistry to achieve a similar desaturates look. Anyone know what film that was?

Bleach bypass (use in movies)

I saw that, but that article says the rickshaw man while miyagawas entry says “her brother”

I’ve seen Otôto (Her Brother) and it has the strong Moby Dick-ish look— indeed that was the first thing I thought of when hearing about the process... but it came out two years later. Based on screencaps, it could have been used more sparingly in Muhomatsu no issho (Rickshaw Man), but it's certainly more pronounced an effect in Otôto

Muhomatsu no issho


Otôto

ivuernis wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 11:12 pmBleach bypass (use in movies)

"Bleach bypass", as used in this context, was first used in Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Inagaki's film Rickshaw Man (1957). Kazuo Miyagawa, as Daiei Film's cameraman, invented bleach bypass for Inagaki's film.

But the source cited after this sentence affirms that it was not Ingaki's film but rather Her Brother (Ototo). Wikipedia is not very reliable.

That makes sense. It's very noticeable in Otôto (and, apologies to fans of the film, it's for me the only thing of note about the movie), but I thought it could still be a matter of degrees with an early first pass not being so drastic

movielocke wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 10:56 pmI watched it last night and my conclusion was that Winston exposed himself when he bought the notebook long before the events of the film begin.

Given that the room itself is a trap. That the picture and the old mans knowledge of the nursery rhyme that goes with the picture are both a trap, and that Julia also has knowledge of the nursery rhyme (which was a trap), and that Julia brings inner circle contraband to the room, to further ensnare Winston in even more illicit behavior, and that Julia set up the ex London excursion so adroitly, it all seems to suggest that Julia is part of a long con against Winston from before the beginning.

I think that you are right movielocke, though it is depressing to think of Julia as probably being as much of an agent for the authorities as O'Brien is, and presumably for much the same reasons of having been caught long before and having proven themselves useful to the authorities in being able to lure other potential seditionaries out into the open (in a modern way perhaps like ex-computer hackers becoming 'rehabilitated' into having their skills used to combat crime instead). It had been a number of years since watching the film before seeing it again last night and I think I came away with that much bleaker perspective on the love affair as well (though it might just be being much more cynical and older now!), probably mostly because the film does have a constant sense of foreshadowing Winston's fate, especially as you say with the development of the "Bells of St Clements" song, where the proprietor of the junk shop provides the first line, then Julia almost reveals herself by being able to quote the second line, and then eventually the telescreen completes the verse.

Also that moment of Julia almost blowing it again by saying "I know" when Winston tells her that he is going to see O'Brien, which on initial viewing perhaps tantalisingly suggests that they might both be part of an underground resistance network (despite Julia also being very upfront about the existence of such! Perhaps Julia's primary characteristic is her unabashed full frontal bluntness in speech and actions. Perhaps it is not just accidental that she spends much of the film naked), but on repeat suggests a connection beyond Winston of a more depressing sort. This is one way in which I think the film is much more bleakly ironic than the book, although it has been a while since I last read that too.

(I had also forgotten that Winston had bought that notebook from the same junk shop even before the film starts, so as you say he was already a 'dead man' from before we meet him, though that makes the revelation of his illicit contraband to the audience a very intense, and the first in the film, moment of being given a privileged glimpse into someone's inner life)

I quite liked the David Ryan interview (especially because I had never seen footage from that 1956 Edmond O'Brien version of the story before!), and one of his comments at the very end of the interview clarified something that I had been thinking about whilst watching the film. Ryan points out that moment when Winston in his work actively promotes just some person from the past into a war hero to replace someone else who has fallen from grace, and then later on in the film we see the news report celebrating this war hero on the telescreen in Winston's apartment as Winston himself is doing some illicit reading. Ryan points out the irony of this, and suggests Winston's work coming back to oppress him through his own screen, but I think it emphasises Winston's journey in this film in an extremely powerful way. Early on Winston seems just like a drone, no particular inner life or drive to him. By the mid-point (when tragically he is already irrevocably damned from the society's point of view) there is actually a suggestion that Winston is somehow able to exist in this hideous world, and is eeking out some kind of small pleasures from life: he has a diary to write down and vent out all of his thoughts about the horrible state of the world; he has a beautiful young lover, who apparently loves him back and is willing to spend time with him in Julia; he potentially has a powerful, connected friend in O'Brien, who potentially might get him on in the world (or even lead the way out of it. Though I suppose in some ways he still does...); and in that scene of fabricating the war hero, I think that we get to see Winston not just doing the tasks being demanded of him through the telescreen dispassionately, but rather actively adding a bit of artistic flourish to his truth manipulation. He is expressing himself in the smallest manner there, and that sense of personal feelings creeping into admin work (where the people should just be seen as images or numbers that can be manipulated rather than actual beings being erased from existence) is perhaps the aspect that suggests that society needed to crush him, quickly and thoroughly, as much as anything else.

I often wonder exactly why a society has to do that: after all Winston was still thoroughly performing his tasks assigned to him, his sense of rebellion was not about going out on the streets and creating a revolution himself (just about getting to have sex, if we are bluntly honest!) but about hoping that the Proles rise up and do it for him (but they are too busy putting their washing out and singing manufactured pop songs, like the latest potential auditionee for Britain's Got Talent preparing themselves to face Simon Cowell's ridicule!), and really Winston seems more effective in that mid-section than he was at the beginning and certainly is at the end. But maybe the true final illusion of the society is its relentless focus on espousing productivity and societal duty above all else, when its purely about wielding control.

Tellingly, whilst Winston's journey is the main focus he is bookended by two other colleagues at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum who also face similar fates to Winston's, and perhaps 'deserve' it even less. Symes and Parsons both are arrested, with Symes made an 'unperson' and Parsons tortured. Symes is too enthusiastically intellectual and knowledgeable about the practices of Newspeak to be allowed to remain - like the pharaohs needing to kill those who designed their pyramids to prevent knowledge of access points leaking out, Symes has too much knowledge of how the system works (Presumably every edition of the Newspeak dictionary is edited by a whole new team of people, whilst the last cohort are disappeared? That's a novel approach to deciding whether to put out a new edition of something! Maybe that is also a good joke by Orwell on his publisher's practices!). Whilst Parsons is so credulous about Big Brother and every proclamation made that he is quick to praise his own daughter's courage in outing him as a thoughtcriminal.

So perhaps in the wider society Winston is not 'a special case' in the sense that it seems more a question of when, not if, everyone gets criminalised at one point or another. Although perhaps it elevates Winston just a little by the authorities feeling the need to throw Julia and O'Brien at him to expose his sedition, as more 'usual' tactics (excessive pride in one's work; being kept in check and monitored by your own family members) would not have worked in Winston's private and solitary case. So situations have to be set up to provide Winston the opportunity to expose himself: the ability to travel out of the city; the Sunday off; the room baited and set like a rat trap; the excessively available woman; the potential friend with connections to allow one to rise above one's station. All opportunities and temptations that are just waiting for Winston to pick up on.

Then there is that harrowing knowledge post-capture that every avenue for alternate thought or deed has been removed. Those looked up to are themselves trapped within the system (not potential fellow subversives but the ultimate agents of control) and revealed to have no particular solution to life's problems, which makes offering them in the first place perhaps the ultimate torture.

___

This all seems horribly bleak, and indeed it is a devastating film, though I did like the couple of moments of humour in there: Winston downing a glass of wine offered by O'Brien in one big gulp, probably because he had never drank it before. And I also found that moment of Winston falling off the edge of the torture rack, with the camera just holding until he pulled himself to his feet quite blackly comically staged this time around. Of course its nothing like as satirically comic as Terry Gilliam's Brazil (which I appreciate even more for actually humanising the fallibility of the society compared to no notions of failure being allowed, whilst it is obvious to anyone with eyes to look that the society is obviously crumbling and infrastructure decaying around everyone, in 1984)

The singing of the group of children (militant Brownies?) in the steam train felt reminiscent of the "Future Belongs To Me" interlude in Cabaret. Maybe it was a conscious allusion?

It should also be noted that this is a film full of comedians, including apparently the person playing the face of Big Brother! Most notably of course Gregor Fisher, who would go on to play the character of Rab C. Nesbitt in the late 1980s, and Roger Lloyd-Pack as the bartender in the final scene is probably best known for playing Trigger in BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Perhaps only those with a comic sense can play the tragedy so well?

I also noted a couple more aspects on this viewing that resonated with current world events: the 'meat not tasting like meat' moment in the cafeteria chimes a little uncomfortably with that recent news story that everyone should become vegetarian or vegan for the environment, potentially forcibly if necessary (and what's the point of eating something that looks like meat but isn't, except pointless nostalgia and treating consumers like dumb animals themselves?). It is also the third moment of something in frame dipping below it briefly before coming back up to match Winston dipping below screen during the morning exercises and falling off the torture rack: in this case there is a chunk of faux-meat on Winston's spoon then he dips it below frame and the spoon comes back up with just the broth instead.

And I really like that in one of the scenes in Winston's job that the information on the viewscreen appears to automatically fade out after a certain period of time to be replaced just by a placeholder image of Big Brother's face. As someone who in my work is constantly fighting against proprietary programmes on my computer 'timing out' after a couple of minutes for 'security purposes' (and I have to use multiple of them, meaning that one 'times out' whilst working on another and that I have to unnecessarily log into systems a dozen or more times each work day), along with if left for five minutes adverts for the company's services popping up as a screensaver and locking the computer, that really hits me much harder than it ever previously did! I often wonder just how many hours over the years have been collectively wasted by everyone having to log in multiple times a day into the same system, but maybe that empty labour is the point?

And also really what happens to Winston in the end but a forcible 'mindfulness' session that leaves him newly resilient against any potential subversive thoughtcrime?
___

But above all else I love the way that this film tackles the interiority of the mind. Winston is not just a passive character but an active one, if primarily inside his own mind (because even the tiniest subversive acts have enormous consequences). He is active in his thought processes, beginning by creating his own narrative in his diary. His view of the world that he exists in, filtered through his perspective. When he eventually gets his hands on Goldstein's fabled book that has been built up by the propaganda to hold all of the answers inside it, he reads it avidly (and shares it intimately with Julia), but really it is a book that is less about the information it contains than the inspiration to think for oneself that it offers. In that scene with Winston reading the book to Julia in bed, the most powerful moment comes not from when Winston is reciting from it, but when he puts it aside and starts applying what he has read to his own internal philosophising that was there long before the 'official, dangerously subversive book' was there to in some ways 'legitimise' those thoughts. Winston is perhaps an auto-didact in that sense, self taught and inquisitive, and that can only end with disaster. Luckily it was disastrous to the individual before it became externalised against the party itself!

That is perhaps the most subversive element of the film. If just books were dangerous, they could all be burned. If it was just an elderly white haired man with a Jewish name on a screen trying to tell you to think for yourself, it could easily be drowned out by screaming and refusal to listen. But when it is a thought inside your own head, what then? (A prospering society should celebrate idiosyncratic approaches to the world, for there lies different and potentially fruitful new avenues for societies as a whole to follow. But instead we see a fundamentally insecure society trapped in cyclical rituals of war and grim and grimy thrall to the past prejudices, which can easily be changed at a whim to the latest foreign threat. Where there could even be terrorists being radicalised from within the society itself. And terrorist bombings could come from outside or be events manufactured to terrorise one's own population. Where there is no allowance for newthought or newlife, just monitoring and surveillance of the population into sterile, terrorised passivity)

Whilst one of the most powerful moments in the torture scene is not the torture itself but the way that, after being embraced by O'Brien, Winston lies back and willingly raises his hands to allow them to be put back in the shackles (subliminally a bit like the patriotic salute), really the most upsetting aspects are those scenes in Winston's mind with him being shown sat with O'Brien on that idyllic hillside enraptured by his kind and patient words, as a pupil would be by their favourite teacher. Instead of thinking for himself, now Winston is the audience listening and trying to internalise the teachings being imparted to him. Trying to understand what others want him to say and feel, even think, rather than having his own thoughts anymore.

But in that magnificent final scene in the cafe, which is a bit of a departure from the book in some ways, Julia and Winston's meeting plays out almost like Julia is checking in on Winston to see if there are any remaining subversive feelings there, as if there were he would not be ready to be executed. (It strikes me a bit like that final scene in The Man Who Fell To Earth in some strange way. Or the final scene of the last episode of The Sopranos, waiting for an inevitable outcome that we never see). Then she leaves Winston alone in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which is the same cafe that Winston saw the previous seditionaries sitting in at the beginning of the film, shells of their former selves and waiting for their existences to end. Maybe it is just the usual location used by the authorities to house every post-torture processing person after they have been ostensibly released back into the community, to bide their final days before they get disappeared from existence. The cafe at the end of time?

The moment of Winston loving Big Brother at the end of the book gets really complicated here just by that action of Winston turning away from the viewscreen in (patriotic? self pitying for a vague memory of his loss?) tears to intone "I love you" out of the screen at us, the audience. It is also done in blunt voiceover, and the voiceover throughout the film has been used to contrast Winston's 'true feelings' against his verbalised party line. Compared to the book making it clear that Big Brother has won and Winston truly loves Big Brother, in some ways the film offers that glimmer of the human spirit that is almost destroyed but still present almost despite the human being himself being able to control it. Even if Julia was just a member of the society trying to root out sedition and never loved Winston, that final "I love you" suggests that the true nature of the relationship did not particularly matter if Winston's feelings were genuine. If the society is a manufactured sham, people might still have real feelings within it. And isn't that the essence of art, manufacturing emotion where none would otherwise exist? And it is important that it is intoned to nobody, as Julia did not need to hear that. It was Winston's final "I love you" to the foggy memory of what his life could have been, how it briefly seemed bearable in the most limited manner possible, and yet was never allowed to fully become.

That's a great analysis of the film, Colin, thanks!

Thanks furbicide! I just found that David Ryan has made a post on his blog about the experience of being interviewed for a Criterion extra!

And Cyril Cusack is great as the proprietor of that bric-a-brac shop turned landlord. Its interesting that he had rather similar roles in the mid 60s both as the Fire Captain in Fahrenheit 451 and as Control to Richard Burton's spy in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold!

It looks like Michael Radford has warmed up to the Eurythmics score over the years. I can understand the initial anger as it was a case of the financier going behind his back. But over the years, both he and Annie Lennox (and maybe with David A. Stewart as well) have made amends and there isn't that acrimony. This should demonstrate that the hatchet was indeed buried.

https://diffuser.fm/eurythmics-1984-soundtrack/

Eurythmics took the assignment quite seriously and it was one of those opportunities where after they achieved a certain success (Touch was already out and doing very well commercially), they pursued a creative risk. This is why I think it works the way it does. Plus I find that it captures best the underlining - or, dare I say, unspoken - dread of that world. The best illustration of this is when Winston recounts in his diary an encounter he had with a prole prostitute.

Commenting on the screenshots, the TT Blu-ray was more in line with the bleach bypass process Roger Deakins has spoken out in the past. I am not sure if he was involved in supervising the digital master for that release (or even what the sources were and at what resolution it was scanned). If there is a difference, it looks, to me, quite negligible. Given Deakins was explicitly involved in the Criterion issue, you can safely say this is the definitive home video presentation (and I have definitely seen it on VHS, LD and the 2003 MGM DVD).