Animal Farm

Dir: John Stephenson

1999

*

That muffled whirling sound is the sound of the great George Orwell spinning in his grave. What Hallmark Films of all people were thinking when they decided to make a live-action version of Animal Farm is beyond me, I can only guess that they thought it was a way of cashing in on the popularity of the CGI-heavy Babe films. Animal Farm is of course a classic piece of literature, a favorite among many (myself included), so as a made-for-television film, the title was always set to attract a strong audience. However, this is not a faithful adaptation – far from it – it is possibly one of the worst screenplays based on a book of all time. Sure, Blade Runner was nothing like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but, as much as people love the book (myself included), Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic isn’t in the same league as Orwell’s seminal masterpiece. I will always suggest that viewers read the original before watching the feature adaptation but in this instance I suggest reading the book twice and skipping the film altogether. Orwell wrote many masterpieces, read one of those (all of those) instead. 1945’s Animal Farm is a story that was meant to reflect the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. It was written in a way that everyone – including children – could understand and digest. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". The 1999 adaptation seems to misunderstand all of this, and the film feels like nothing more than a tale about how pigs are the meanest of all farm animals. The story has been updated unsuccessfully, with the animals being bribed with television and many of the key characters are nothing more than shadows of what they are in the original. Key moments are either twisted or missing altogether. The meaningful moments are rendered meaningless and the horrifying climax of the novel is passed by halfway through the film. The re-written ending is possibly one of the worst endings to a film that has ever been. I’m sure it was intended to be symbolic, perhaps something to do with the ending of a cold war? The story really looses its way, the Nazis are referenced and supposedly a world war in the form of a thunder storm are wiped away and everyone lives happily ever after. The farm received new owners who are fresh-faced with bright white teeth and everything is well again as they drive up the path in their white convertible. Are they dead? Is this Farm heaven or has nothing been learnt? Either way, it’s dreadful. It completely mixes up history and time-points and makes a hash out of everything Orwell wrote about. I imagine greats such as Peter Ustinov, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Patrick Stewart and Pete Postlewaite thought it was great to be doing a bit of Orwell and the younger cast like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Ormond and Kelsey Grammer must have seen it as an honour too but also for working with such legends. I hope they all got paid well as I’m sure none of them boast about it being on their curriculum vitaes today. It's amazing really how wrong they got it, especially considering how good the 1954 animation was.