Why I Watched This Movie
As with the 1999 version, I watched this in class with a group of students who had completed reading the book (different class this time.)
Positives
* The production values and animation quality of this film are decent (at least for a 1950s British film).
Negatives
* Tonally inconsistent—when making a cartoon about farm animals, the filmmakers were unable to resist the temptation to put in a lot of animated whimsical material, which I’m not sure mashed well with the heavier scenes.
* Related to the above point, it’s very unclear who the target audience of this film is—the film is a bit too dark for kids, and a bit too silly for adults.
* Orwell would probably not have approved of the film’s changed ending—if the whole point of the book is that revolutions naturally devolve into dictatorships, then what is the purpose of having a second revolution at the end to overthrow the first revolution?
The Review
Because a film engages you on a different level than a book does, not all great books make great films. Because it is dense with political allegory and symbolism, doesn’t have an identifiable protagonist, and lacks any satisfying character arcs, or climactic resolutions, Animal Farm may be one of those books that is never going to work as a movie.
Despite my complaints about the film’s minor faults, the filmmakers give a good try here at adapting Orwell, and if it doesn’t quite succeed as a movie, it’s because the project was always doomed to failure anyway.
Other Things I Would Talk about if I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* Comparing this film to the 1999 version—but the short version is that although both films are flawed, this is the vastly superior adaptation.
Rating :
2 out of 10 stars (I’m sympathetic to the fact that the filmmakers were doing the best they could with the source material they had, but in terms of watchability and enjoyability, as someone in the audience I can’t rate this higher than a 2).
Link of the Day
In Conversation with Noam Chomsky
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