Dystopia in Film

• Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang

  • rich industrialists live at the top of skyscrapers, while the working class live underground.

  links to:

  • Manipulation of time - time goes from 1 to 10 instead of 12 in 1984
  • Social hierarchy - proles vs party
  • Links to Time Machine by H.G Wells - where the lower class live below
  • Highly regulated timetabled day focused on work - Brave New World & We
• District 9 (2009)

  • after aliens arrived to find refuge on earth, they were separated in a slum called District 9 where they are experimented on by the humans

  links to :

  • Use of academics like the sociologists working for universities - Professor Pieixoto in THT
  • Started off trying to help them then became a dystopia - THT “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”
  • proles vs outer & inner party
• Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam

  • satire of 1984
  • Sam Lowry meets a women from his daydreams who he falls in love with in his life on monotonous bureaucracy

  links to

  • Room 101 - torture
  • Bureaucracy - Ministry of Truth
  • Relationship with girl mirrors Winston and Julia
• V for Vendetta (2005) by James McTeigue

  • Curfew - restriction in dystopias like We
  • The man who played Winston, John Hurt, played the dictator
  • Guy Fawkes mask - Hacker group Anonymous
  • Resistance group as the focal point of the narrative - the Brotherhood or Mayday which stay in the background and are not really focused on
• Dorian Lynskey's comparison of the Lego Movie (2014) to 1984

  • Looks like an utopia but is dystopian - Brave New World
  • Follows instructions step by step - We
  • Prayvaganza - Taco Tuesdays
  • Emmett and Wyldstyle - Winston and Julia
  • President Business = Donald Trump - emergence of capitalism in a way that replaces traditional political control
• The Last of Us (2013 game, 2023 series)

  • Fungus controlling people - Soma in Brave New World, Gin in 1984
  • Links to ecological dystopias - global warming, - Silent Spring, The Drowned World