BRAVE NEW WORLD

US, 1998, 87 minutes, Colour.
Peter Gallagher, Leonard Nimoy, Tim Guinee, Rya Kihlstedt, Sally Kirkland, Miguel Ferrer.
Directed by Leslie Lipmann and Larry Williams.

Brave New World is one of many adaptations of Aldous Huxley’s celebrated novel. Huxley was descended from a line of intellectuals and sceptics who influenced thinking in the late 19th century in Britain. Thomas Huxley and Julian Huxley as well as Aldous contributed to the philosophical reflection on the present and, especially, the future. In this they were in the company of such novelists as H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, and of George Orwell, especially with Animal Farm and 1984.

Huxley creates a futuristic totalitarian society. It is pointed out that when he wrote his novel the only such states were the Soviet Union and Mussolini’s Italy. However, in his imaginings, he created a world in which people had very little control over their lives and their fate. It is very much a Big Brother world. It is also a world of science, with cloning, with the use of drugs to control people. He also foretells a pornography of sexuality rather than a pornography of violence.

Huxley was a social writer more than a novelist and his ideas contributed to the reflection in the early part of the 20th century. Huxley also worked in Hollywood, contributing to the screenplay of Pride and Prejudice and died on the same day, November 22, 1963, as John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis. In this version, the hero is played by Peter Gallagher and Leonard Nimoy features as Mustafa Mond.

The film visually recreates a science fiction futuristic world. It was directed by Leslie Lipman and Larry Williams – Lipman working mainly in television, Williams having a short career and he was to die a year after the screening of the film on television.

1.The work of Aldous Huxley, his success and reputation, prophetic? Europe in the 30s and 40s? The models of the Soviet Union, Mussolini’s fascist Italy? The rise of Nazism? Post-World? War Two Iron Curtain experience? Communism? A 1990s interpretation of the novel for a contemporary audience?

2.The visuals of the film, the sets, the décor, costumes? A futuristic look? The musical score?

3.The film as simply a version of Huxley’s work, an interpretation and an update?

4.The title, the reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest? Prospero and the anticipation of the future? Hopes and optimism? Healing? The reality?

5.The context of wars and destruction, human ills, love and possessiveness, the loss of individuality, the collective mentality? The loss of the arts? Economy and economics? Supply and demand? Systems? Controllers and directors? An elitism? Grades in the hierarchy? The world of brainwashing, television images, slogans? The populace not using their brain? A happy and contented populace? Wishes and whims, pleasure? Not denying any whim? The promise of comfort? The role of education? The non-comprehension of what was happening by ordinary people?

6.The world, the controller, the world of Big Brother – but more benign? The chemist and the choices? Art and reading? Languages, philosophy? The decisions? Bernard and his being the centre of the story? The discussions, the options for happiness? John and Bernard?

7.The director and his control, mean-spirited? The traditions of Marx and Lenin? Brainwashing? Meetings? The irony of the secret, deletion?(**??) The treatment of Linda? Death? Brainwashing the Delta? Exposed and conditioned?

8.Bernard, his personality, his skills? Questions? Savages? John and Linda, his experience, the return? The director of hatcheries and conditioning? The controller? His relationship with Lanina? - her name – philosophy, efficiency, the social concern, the touches of jealousy? His experience with John? The truth about the director and the Betas? The director and discussions, the job? John’s death? Pregnancy, options, the ending?

9.Lanina and her teaching, friendship? The hedonistic background? Children? Bernard, John and Linda? The effect? Thinking but not understanding? The possibilities for change and growth, John’s death, pregnancy?

10.John and Lanina, the assault, issues of life, their agreement? Shakespeare? First impressions? Linda and her story, a whore, drunk, hospital, death and the callousness? Social issues, sexuality, explanation? The children laughing? Death?

11.The children, lacking in understanding, the role of the teachers, ineffectual?

12.Media, television, control, the parental role, television as ‘mother’?

13.The Alphas, rules, their self-centredness?

14.The Deltas, the feeling, the house, the brainwashing, the attack?

15.Issues of pain, happiness – as if God had intervened?

16.Choices, tragedy, human nature, survival?

17.The dramatisation of these themes – for a science fiction futuristic film? As an interpretation of the more philosophical and socially concerned ideas of Huxley?