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From Page to Projector: ‘Brave New World’

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brave-new-worldDystopian science-fiction is among my favorite genres in both the book and movie realms. Movies like “Blade Runner” and books like “The Hunger Games” (both of which I’ve discussed in this spot before) offer engaging and stimulating ways to look at current events by painting a future that can both fascinate and chill audiences. There’s a trick to creating just the right changes and continuing trends in the fictional worlds that not every author/director is capable of capturing.

One of the most brilliantly conceived yet horrifying utopian environments and cultures is found in “Brave New World,” a novel published in 1932 and written by Aldous Huxley. Though not well received at first publication, the novel took off in later years for its incredible foresight and commentary on the Industrial Revolution, and it is now commonly listed among the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century. It surprised me that no major motion picture adaptations were ever made from the novel. Ridley Scott (director of “Alien,” “Gladiator” and the aforementioned “Blade Runner”) had been working on an adaptation, but it has been stalled for years. Until then, there are only a few TV movies to hold fans over.

Of the two TV movies, the one rated highest on IMDb is the one released in 1980. It was directed by Burt Brinckerhoff, who has had a hand in TV a lot over the past 40 years. It was nominated for a pair of primetime Emmys and features a pretty solid cast, highlighted by Keir Dullea, who played Dave in another sci-fi classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The plots are the same, though the order in which the audience receives it is altered. The story takes place in a mass-production, peaceful England in which people are engineered rather than born and everyone is conditioned from birth to fulfill specific duties like satisfied parts of a great machine. There is no privacy, and everyone shares everything, including sexual partners, as exclusive relationships are unheard of.

The movie begins its story before the book’s starting point to tell the whole story linearly instead of introducing it midway through the story. The plot centers around Bernard Marx, a member of the highest class of humans who through an error in his incubation possesses characteristics that isolate him from the rest of society. He has feelings for just one girl, Lenina, whom he takes with him on a vacation to the Savage Reservation in America. While there, Bernard comes across the son (itself a perceived impossibility) of his boss, who has pledged to send Bernard away from society upon his return. Bernard brings the “savage,” John, back with him, humiliating his boss and leading to his rise in the people’s eye. With his new popularity, Bernard begins to conform, while John, who grew up reading the banned works of Shakespeare, starts to rebel against the civilization, ending with his hanging himself after failing to fit in or fix society.

The movie gets the core of the novel right. The futuristic society feels completely disjointed from the modern day, extolling many of the traits and emotions we associate most with humanity — love, imagination, sadness — as vulgar and savage. Though the sets and costumes are clearly associated with the time in which the movie was made, the ideas and themes it addresses are, like Huxley’s original work, timeless.

The movie doesn’t improve much from the book, though the change made leading up to John’s suicide is a well-done homage to a work John references often, “Romeo and Juliet.” After the first act, which covers the boss’ journey to the Savage Reservation that led to John’s birth, most of the movie’s plot is a straight carryover of the book. There are minor additions here and there, but no added scenes or characters of real significance. This actually somewhat hurts the movie’s flow, as it makes the story drag to three hours.

If anyone were to try to convert “Brave New World” into a modern-day movie, he or she could take some solid advice from the 1980 version. It didn’t try to do too much and just focused on telling a story that has proven to transcend eras. A more modern-day version of the story, one released in 1998 starring Peter Gallagher and Leonard Nimoy, is also worth watching. Huxley’s vision is certainly film-worthy, as it inspired maybe the most influential dystopian work of the 20th century, George Orwell’s “1984,” which I will discuss next time.


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