Too different from the book
This movie was WAY too different from the book for my liking, but I did find it interesting. The saddest part is at the end, when Bernard and Lenina are holding their baby. =(
sharethe end was soooooooo cheesy
share
MovieChat Forums > Brave New World (1998) Discussion > Too different from the book
Bernard and Lenina have a baby? Having only read the book, yeah, I can see why this movie would be a lot different from the book.
Is it any good, though?
It's a fun movie, as long as you don't take it too seriously or expect it to be too faithful to the book. Some of the parts are scathingly hilarious (particularly the depictions of TV journalists). There are some changes; Bernard is not as much as a general misfit as in the book, and Lenina is more complex and deeper than Huxley's portrait (party girl who justs wants to have fun). Several minor characters are absent (e.g., Benito Hoover, Helmholtz Watson). I don't wanna say more, since you haven't seen it ... let's just say it's to some extent "insprired by" instead of "based on" the book -- there is quite a bit that's intact from the book, but also quite a lot that isn't.
shareI didn't like it because it was so different from the book. There were so many parts missing and the end was so cheesy - I thought I'd be drowning in syrup.
Apart from that, I don't think the end fits the story. Huxley's "vision" is a pure dystopia, nobody is happy in the end (except for the inhabitants of the World State with their drug-induced unnatural happiness) - this is a warning against such "utopian" states. In the movie, the main characters find themselves to be a happy family in the end - now what's the message here? "Go and build yourselves a dystopia, you won't have to live in it (if you're lucky)!" Yeah, right.
Alright, I gotta admit that I don't like book adaptations in general (with a few exceptions such as "The Perfume"), but honestly, this one was bad.
Now what I can't understand is this: The story is a classic in book form, so why change it to make it into a movie? What is the point, really? Brave New World was never intended to be a happy, feel-good story, so why go and make a film like that?
Perhaps it's about time someone remade it properly, and stuck to the storyline. It can't be that hard, can it?
Happy, feel-good story? Did you watch the same film I did?
I thought the movie did a great job. A character like Bernard is in the book would have been out of place on screen. Books communicate through rational arguments, which are best made by contrasting characters like Marx is in the book. However, TV communicates more subtlely by creating revealing moments, which the movie had a number of.
Take the laughter of the class as they try to make sense of what John has told them about Shakespeare.
Or the scene after John died, when Lenina is talking to her class about heroes. "Now we know that heroism is really anti-social behavior" she reads from a textbook. Her facial expressions show that she is thinking of John though, and now no longer believes the text.
These subtleties were the highlights of the film, as they should have been. The highlight of the book was the philosophical conversations between Mustapha Mond, the savage and Bernard, but complex philosophical discussions don't work on TV.
This version is much better than one that sticks to the book would be.
There is a place for both. As a prof, I can identify, with Lennina's disconet having been exposed to a new worldview. The 1980 tv addition, which can be downloaded for free from google, is more book faithful, very interesting also. Particularly with the role of propganda.
Sexuality is interesting in any form
The highlight of the book was the philosophical conversations between Mustapha Mond, the savage and Bernard, but complex philosophical discussions don't work on TV.Actually, it worked very well in the 1980 film. Also with the "philosophical
conversations" between Helmholtz Watson and the young Bernard Marx.
This 1998 version, devoid of the whole philosophical debate, focuses more
on the love story angle, and basically comes off as just another lame SyFy
Channel-type production. share
You didn't get the message that their Utopian ideas weren't the answer just because the lead characters were able to escape??? It doesn't have to have the same grim ending to be meaningful does it. I thought the film was very touching but it wasn't THAT sweet. Just kinda nice.
share