Nineteen Eighty-Four - Part One
Genre: Sci-Fi
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Meirad Tako
Based on the novel by George Orwell
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Javier Bardem, Saoirse Ronan, David Morse, Elden Henson, Eric Stonestreet, Lukas Haas, Diedrich Bader, Melanie Lynskey
Plot: In April, when the clocks chime thirteen, Winston Smith (Cillian Murphy), a minor member of the Outer Party, ascends to his apartment in Victory Mansions after leaving his job at the Records Department early. His purpose is to document his thoughts in a diary acquired from a second-hand store in a poorer district of London, the capital of Airstrip One within the vast superstate of Oceania.
Due to the electricity being shut off for Hate Week preparations, Winston, a 39-year-old man with fair hair, dressed in a blue Party uniform, and physically frail, ascends seven grimy flights of stairs to his apartment. He struggles with a limp caused by a varicose ulcer on his right ankle. At each landing, he encounters posters displaying the imposing visage of a man with a black mustache, accompanied by the words, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU."
Upon entering his apartment, Winston is greeted by the sound of a voice reciting statistics about pig iron production emanating from a telescreen fixed into the wall, impossible to deactivate but adjustable in volume. While gazing out at the dreary, monochrome cityscape, he notices ubiquitous posters of Big Brother and the word "INGSOC" scrawled on a nearby wall. A police helicopter lurks in the distance, surveilling the populace, serving as a stark reminder to Winston of the constant monitoring by the Thought Police through the telescreen, prompting him to purposefully keep his back turned to it.
Looking out of his window at the dilapidated and bombed-out structures lining the streets, Winston finds himself unable to recall if London has always appeared so desolate. His attention is drawn to four imposing gleaming white pyramids dominating the skyline: his workplace, the Ministry of Truth (referred to as Minitrue in Newspeak), responsible for media and education control; the Ministry of Peace (Minipax), overseeing warfare efforts; the ominous Ministry of Love (Miniluv), enforcing law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty), tasked with economic management.
Suppressing any hint of emotion on his face, Winston turns towards the telescreen. Having left work ahead of schedule, he has forfeited his chance to dine in the canteen. Despite his hunger, he must preserve the lone piece of dark bread in his possession for breakfast the following day. He pours himself a teacup of Victory Gin, its odor reminiscent of oil, and retrieves a Victory cigarette.
Seated in a concealed alcove, away from the watchful eye of the telescreen, Winston gathers his penholder, nib, bottle of ink, and a blank notebook. While there are no explicit laws against keeping a diary in Oceania, Winston understands that discovery could result in either death or a quarter-century of forced labor. He cautiously inscribes what he assumes to be the date—April 4th, 1984—in the diary, acknowledging the uncertainty surrounding dates in the current era.
With a sense of trepidation, Winston commences his diary entry, recounting a recent film depicting a harrowing scene of a refugee ship under attack by a helicopter. He vividly portrays a moment where a middle-aged Jewish woman attempts to shield a child from gunfire with her own body, juxtaposed with the callous response of the audience and the lone outcry of a proletarian woman. Recollecting the catalyst for his decision to begin the diary, Winston continues writing.
Feeling nervous, Winston begins writing in the diary about a film he had seen the previous evening in which a ship full of refugees was bombed by a helicopter. He describes a scene in which a middle-aged Jewish woman ineffectually covers a child with her body in order to protect him from bullets and notes the audience's delighted reaction to their deaths and a lone prole woman's outraged protest. He then remembers the incident that caused him to leave work and begin the diary.
That morning, at a routine political rally called the Two Minutes Hate, O'Brien (Javier Bardem), a charismatic Inner Party member whose body language suggests to Winston that he secretly hates the Party, had entered the Records Department with an attractive dark-haired girl, Julia (Saoirse Ronan) from the Fiction Department whom Winston suspects is an agent of the Thought Police
During the Two Minutes Hate, the telescreen broadcasted a story about Emmanuel Goldstein (David Morse), a former Party leader and now its scapegoat. Winston experienced conflicting feelings of hate toward Goldstein on one hand and the Party on the other. He also felt hatred toward the Julia, and imagined beating, raping, and slitting her throat. He realized that he hated her because she was young and desirable, and was wearing a scarlet sash that identified her as a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, an organization that promotes chastity.
As the crowd's hatred for Goldstein intensified, Big Brother appeared on the telescreen, displaying the Party's slogans: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Winston made eye contact with O'Brien, sensing a silent understanding from him. Pondering whether O'Brien was part of the elusive Brotherhood, a group opposing the Party, Winston decided to return home to document his thoughts in his diary.
Upon reaching his apartment, Winston discovered that he had been repeatedly writing "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" in his diary. He realized that regardless of whether he recorded them or not, his dissenting thoughts amounted to thoughtcrime, and he would inevitably be uncovered, arrested by the Thought Police, and eliminated. Just then, a knock sounded on the door.
Winston carelessly leaves his diary open on the table and answers a knock at the door, finding his neighbor, Mrs. Parsons (Melanie Lynskey), seeking help with a clogged sink. While fixing the sink, the Parsons children, dressed in the uniform of the Spies youth organization, confront Winston, accusing him of thoughtcrime. The boy even points a toy gun at him and pleads to witness a public execution. As Winston departs, the boy hits him in the neck with a slingshot projectile.
Back in his flat, Winston recalls a dream featuring a voice, later identified as O'Brien's, promising to meet him where there is no darkness. The telescreen announces a victory over Eurasia and a reduction in chocolate rations. Winston questions the purpose of keeping his diary, realizing its inevitable discovery upon his vaporization. However, he concludes that it's a means to maintain his sanity rather than a form of communication with the future. Resigned to his fate but determined to prolong his survival, Winston puts away the diary and resumes his work.
Winston awakens from a dream of his mother, who was eliminated when he was a child, shortly after his father vanished. In the dream, he sees his mother holding his infant sister on a sinking ship, gazing up at him through the water. He acknowledges his mother's sacrifice for him and laments the absence of privacy, love, friendship, or complex emotions in their society—only fear, hatred, and pain.
In another dream sequence, he finds himself in a countryside pasture he refers to as the "Golden Country." There, Julia approaches him, casually undressing, a gesture Winston admires. As he utters the word "Shakespeare" in his sleep, he is abruptly jolted awake by the shrill whistle of the telescreen, signaling the start of another workday.
Struggling through mandatory morning exercises, Winston attempts to recall a time when Oceania wasn't embroiled in war but fails. Instead, he reminisces about seeking shelter with his family in a Tube station during an air raid, accompanied by a drunken old man who repeatedly voiced mistrust towards the authorities. Due to the constant alteration of historical records and the prohibition on discussing anything other than the Party's version of events, keeping track becomes impossible. Winston vaguely recalls that while the country has always been at war, the identity of the enemy has changed. However, according to the Party, Oceania has perpetually been at war with Eurasia and aligned with Eastasia. Any deviation from this narrative constitutes thoughtcrime.
Winston recognizes the Party's terrifying power to manipulate the past, not just through media control but also by influencing the thoughts of citizens. He reflects on doublethink, the Newspeak term for "reality control," which allows individuals to hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously for ideological convenience. Trying to recall when he first encountered Big Brother, Winston realizes that the past has not only been altered but completely obliterated. He struggles to remember when he first encountered the term INGSOC, the Newspeak term for English Socialism.
Suddenly, the telescreen blares, demanding his focus, and Winston becomes aware that his facial expressions are revealing his disdain for the Party.
At his workplace, Winston revises news articles to align with the Party's current historical narrative, a process referred to as "rectifying." His directives arrive via pneumatic tubes on rolls of paper, which are then discarded into "memory holes," openings in the walls leading to an incinerator. All forms of media—books, films, photographs, and newspapers—are subjected to "rectification" to maintain the Party's infallible image.
Winston observes his coworkers, including a reserved individual named Tillotson (Elden Henson), a man tasked with erasing the names of vaporized individuals, and a poet named Ampleforth (Eric Stonestreet) who modifies poems to conform to Party ideology. The Ministry of Truth is a vast entity teeming with employees responsible for generating propaganda, including sensational novels and pornography aimed at the lower classes or proles, to divert their attention from recognizing their oppression.
Winston begins rewriting an article about an Inner Party member, Comrade Withers, who has been eliminated. In place of Withers, Winston fabricates a new figure, Comrade Ogilvy, portraying him as an outstanding Party member dedicated to rooting out thought-criminals. He dictates his revisions into a speakwrite, confident that his version of the article will be the one preserved, despite suspecting Tillotson is also working on it.
During lunch in the canteen, Winston converses with Syme (Lukas Haas), a linguist working on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Despite Syme's adherence to political orthodoxy, Winston suspects his exceptional intelligence will eventually lead to his arrest by the Thought Police. They discuss the forthcoming Eleventh Edition, which Syme anticipates will be concise and definitive, applauding the "destruction of words" as a means to eradicate thoughtcrime.
As they talk, Winston overhears a man at a nearby table speaking in a propagandistic manner, prompting Syme to mention "duckspeak," a term in Newspeak denoting unconscious propaganda. Parsons (Diedrich Bader), Winston's rotund and sweaty neighbor, joins them, while Syme studies a list of words. Parsons solicits a donation for Hate Week from Winston and proudly recounts how his daughter reported a suspicious individual to the patrols.
The telescreen interrupts with news of a 20 percent increase in the standard of living in Oceania, attributing it to Big Brother's benevolence in raising the chocolate ration. Winston is dismayed by the prevalence of doublethink, enabling people to accept blatant falsehoods despite the reality of food shortages, clothing and cigarette scarcities, and deteriorating infrastructure, with the Party having reduced the chocolate ration just the day before.
As the man's quacking voice persists at the adjacent table, Winston inwardly predicts that Mrs. Parsons will one day face denunciation by her children and subsequent vaporization. He extends this grim forecast to include Syme, himself, and even O'Brien, but excludes Parsons, the quacking man, and the Julia from the Fiction Department. Noticing the girl's presence across from the quacking man, Winston becomes apprehensive, fearing he may have committed facecrime by displaying disloyal emotions. The sound of a whistle signals the end of the break, and everyone resumes their work.
In his diary, Winston recounts a clandestine encounter with an elderly prole prostitute in a basement kitchen, acknowledging it as a minor transgression. Disgusted by the Party's strict stance on sex, which permits it solely within marriage for procreation purposes and devoid of pleasure, he reflects on his past marriage to Katharine. Despite their politically orthodox union, Katharine viewed sex as a duty to the Party, resulting in her departure when they failed to conceive.
Restricted from expressing desire for fellow Party members, Winston turns to encounters with prostitutes as his sole sexual release, knowing that even harboring desire constitutes thoughtcrime. He admits in his diary that despite the prostitute's advanced age and lack of teeth, he engaged in sexual activity with her nonetheless.
Continuing his diary entry, Winston expresses his belief that the Party will eventually be toppled by the proles, who constitute 85 percent of Oceania's population. The Party neglects to indoctrinate them, and their unrestrained behavior, including promiscuity, goes unpunished, as the Party deems them too unintelligent to pose a threat.
Copying a passage about capitalism from a children's textbook, Winston ponders the extent of the lies within it, suspecting that life in Oceania might have been better before the Revolution abolished the capitalist system. Despite the Party's claims of improved living standards and greater happiness post-Revolution, Winston harbors doubts.
Reflecting on a photograph he discovered eleven years prior, depicting three former Revolution leaders—Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford—who were later exposed as traitors, tortured, and vaporized, Winston regrets destroying the evidence of their innocence due to fear. Witnessing their emotional breakdown at the Chestnut Tree Café further solidified his understanding that their confessions were coerced.
Winston is perplexed by the Party's continuous manipulation of history and appalled by its denial of objective reality, realizing that common sense is deemed heretical by the Party.
Winston realizes that he is writing the diary directed at O'Brien. Despite acknowledging his own intellectual shortcomings, he remains steadfast in his belief that he is correct while the Party is mistaken. He concludes that the fundamental freedom from which all others stem is the ability to perceive reality accurately, including the basic truth that two plus two equals four.
Instead of attending the Community Center, Winston wanders through prole neighborhoods, aware that the Party frowns upon seeking solitude, termed "ownlife." Anxious about encountering a patrol, he narrowly avoids being struck by a rocket bomb and comes across a severed hand on the pavement, which he kicks aside.
Passing by a group of proles debating the Lottery outside a pub, Winston marvels at their susceptibility to its largely illusory prizes but maintains hope in their potential rebellion against the Party. He follows an elderly man into another pub, hoping to glean insights about pre-Revolution life, but finds the man incoherent, realizing that firsthand accounts of history have been eradicated.
Later, Winston revisits the junk shop where he purchased the diary from the knowledgeable prole proprietor, Mr. Charrington. He buys a glass paperweight containing coral and admires a print of an old church in an upstairs room, noting the absence of a telescreen. Charrington teaches Winston an old nursery rhyme, "Oranges and Lemons," evoking nostalgia for London's past churches.
Leaving the shop, Winston plans to return in a month to purchase the print, learn the remainder of the nursery rhyme, and potentially rent the private bedroom, drawn to its seclusion. Spotting Julia in the street, he suspects her of spying but refrains from violence. Arriving home in a state of dread, he seeks solace in gin but remains haunted by thoughts of his inevitable arrest, torture, and execution. Contemplating O'Brien's cryptic remark about a place without darkness, Winston examines a coin bearing Big Brother's likeness.
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