After a stint in art school, Hurt returned his focus to acting as a member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was originally set to appear in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire but the character was ultimately cut from that film.Īt the age of 9, he decided to become an actor. John Hurt, born John Vincent Hurt, ( 22 January, 1940- 25 January, 2017) was a British character actor and Academy Award-nominee, who portrayed Garrick Ollivander in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and returned to the same role in both film adaptations of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Best Actor nomination: The Elephant Man, 1980).Best Supporting Actor nomination: Midnight Express, 1978.It is hard, looking around the globe, to say that he was altogether wrong.”Ī telling of the George Orwell novel, which depicts a future totalitarian society-bleak in every aspect, thoroughly controlled, and impossible to escape. “What Orwell feared, when he wrote his novel in 1948, was that Hitlerism, Stalinism, centralism, and conformity would catch hold and turn the world into a totalitarian prison camp. It’s not the most uplifting film, but it’s certainly a very important one.
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However, this is such a powerful portrayal that many viewers will find the ultimate defeat of the individual in the hands of the mega-state depressing, and some scenes of torture are graphic. In particular, the expressive John Hurt is riveting in the leading role. It does a good job of communicating the novel’s substance and spirit, and it has some compelling performances. It would be hard to imagine a better dramatization of Orwell’s novel than this film.
1984 john hurt at his job full#
In the background to all this is the full panorama of Orwell’s projected totalitarian world: the control of the individual through control of the language (“newspeak”) endless broadcasts of faked production statistics intended to give the impression of material progress despite obvious widespread poverty purges and denunciations of supposed traitors televised executions 24-hour surveillance via in-home monitors and so on. Such are the horrors of torture and mind control that in the end the state succeeds in destroying even their love. But in this world, love for anything but the state is forbidden, and despite the most minute precautions, one day they are caught.
1984 john hurt at his job series#
The two arrange a series of trysts in which they gradually get to know, trust, and love each other. He meets a young woman who, in her own cynical way, also sees through the propaganda. However, in that crowd is a man who sees through at least some of it. The propaganda has clearly had its effect. A crowd watches the broadcast and begins shouting feverish anti-Goldstein condemnations. It opens with a propaganda broadcast in which Goldstein, an enemy of the state, is being denounced.
1984 john hurt at his job free#
The story was meant as a warning to the remaining free countries, whose academic eggheads in particular seemed curiously open to socialist ideas.
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It’s a distillation of all the horrors of National Socialism, Soviet and Chinese communism, and the various variants thereof. And the state is in constant war with neighbors to unify the people through an “us against them” mentality. Families are destroyed to insure complete loyalty only to the state. People are forced to make public confessions of crimes they never committed. History is rewritten to create an appearance of progress. This Orwellian view of a possible future draws heavily on modern experience with totalitarian socialism: People in this world are slaves to the state.