Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Updated is O.K. but lost some of the sting, 23 Oct 2002
This animal is not available in the U.S. however it does occasionally make late night TV.
Update classics as Shakespeare and you distort the feel along with the message. It was written for a period and the more you deviate the more you lose the point let alone the ambiance. Update "Brave New World" and you threaten to do the same. However the use of today's technology and making the primitives just unruly people (shades of Login's Run) did not actually distract that much and may even have been the original intention. The movie uses well know actors that fit the characters (Peter Gallagher as Bernard Marx and Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond). The scenery is and sci-fi technology is well done and believable.With all of this there is a great letdown when the story line is not followed and the sting and impact is missing from the book as the story was changed into just a contemporary social commentary. The book by Aldous Huxley is based on the day's example of genetic engineering or a least a little alcohol to create people that were happy in their station. The character John hangs him self in exasperation. In this teleplay rewritten by Dan Mazur and David Tausik the Brave new World is just a society of sex-crazed drudges and John just trips and accidentally falls to his death. There are several other watered down differences. Purists are bound to hate this and ask why the effort. Others may find this teleplay interesting enough as entertainment.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A supreme adoption of a fascinating book, 16 Nov 2000
By A Customer
"Brave New World", one of the most popular books to be read in school today, shows a dystopia, in which the idea of artificial happiness and total control is carried to an horrifying end. The adaptation we have here now refuses to just visualize the text, it rather puts the idea into an even more modern dress, which makes Huxley's ideas appear to be closer to us than they are in the book. Just to give an example, we see that what is the "savage reservation" in the book, an area with uncivilized, dirty people in it, turns out to be a territory with people like ourselves living in it. This reminds us of the fact, that we might become what the savages are in the book: outsiders, hated and feared by the masses only because of the fact that they have "obsolete" manners. I admit that the horror of the bokanofskified people was missing, however, one should not only look for computer-effects in a film like this one. Therefore I disagree with other reviewers, who seem to believe that science-fiction-films need to have laser-weapons and light-swords or at least visual effects like hundreds of people, who look all the same, in order to be good. Instead of thinking this way, we are well-advised to look beneath the surface once and to concentrate on the ideas, not the cheap effects only. All in all, I consider this to be a masterpiece of subtile horror and a very elegant adaptation of the ideas in the book, which is especially enjoyable when you read the book first.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An edited version of the vision., 12 Feb 2003
The ideas of the book are portrayed in a edited version of Huxley's vision. This fact does not detract from the quality of the film. Yes, many things are missing in the film that were contained in the book. No Boskanovification proceses or results have been portrayed, the DHC does not conduct the tour to students (Lenina does), and the ending is not as the book (John does not whip himself or Lenina, doesn't commit suicide, no orgy-porgy: none of the sacrifices or martrydom John hinted at while still in the resevation). While important moments and aspects have been avoided, the film is still in the same context of the book. It is still a warning of unmoralistic, antihumanistic, scientific advancement. It is still a dytopia.
It is also worth noting that in the revised foreword of Brave New World (196-), Huxley himself said that if he could have rewritten the book he would most definatly include the element of brainwashing centred around subliminal messages. The film does have this idea contained in it and it works well. Whether this gives the film makers the right to tamper and change Huxley's vision is obviously debatable.
The film deals with very important issues and does it well. Compared with the book it is not the same. But no film adaption is ever the same: whether it is different from a personal view ie character image, or scripted differently, as the case here, it never is your personal vision or imagination, it is someone elses.
As a stand alone film, Brave New World is a fantastic vision of a dytopian future which echos our present more and more everyday.
Because of this is it important.
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