Brave New World (1980)

Imagine a world absent the need for free will where happiness is just a soma away, you take a pill to overcome sadness, a pill to make yourself sleepy and a pill to keep things perfect. A world that not only encourages sex with multiple partners but mandates it – several times a day in fact.

There is no family, there is only perfection. Babies are genetically engineered into specific roles: Alphas have it easy and are bred to innovate and lead, Betas are happy admins and are bred to breed, Gammas and Epsilons are happy laborers that handle the manual labor. Everyone is raised to not only enjoy his/her position but also to maintain it.

In this perfect world, there are no diseases only beauty, there is no war or conflict only peace. Old videos detailing the primitive earth of today are shown to the alphas to remind them of how corrupt and bad the world was prior to humanity finding this perfection.

Sounds like absolute hell doesn’t it? Well as a free-thinking human being in a democratic society of today, I can personally say that this movie was scary. If this is the future then I want no part of it. This drone society built on mind-altering drugs, sex without feeling (fall in love and you get in trouble), and birth control to prevent natural child-birth.

If you have experienced George Orwell’s 1984 then you will feel at home seeing this bleak prediciton of what the future holds. Based on the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley of the same name, Brave New World stars Keir Dullea as Thomas Graham Bell, Julie Cobb as Linda Lysenko, Kristoffer Tabori as John Savage, Dick Anthony Williams as Heimholtz Watson – a gifted artist and Bud Cort as Bernard Marx.

The acting is absolutely atrocious in this made-for-TV movie and it is a long one (over 3 hours in length) but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t watchable. For lovers of Science Fiction and classic movies, this is a must-see. I was very pleased with the ethnic diversity in the Alphas (quite a few blacks) and impressed with the number of familiar faces from blaxpoitations involved.

The biggest gripe with this movie lies with it’s unnecessary length. There are 3 major tales that play out throughout the course of it all and the 3rd involving John Savage is drug out so long that you quickly lose interest and begin to wonder at the time. I wonder at director Burt Brinckerhoff’s decision to drag out Savage’s tale as he did, and if Tabori were a better actor it may have worked. Instead we are greeted with an attempt at a Shakespearean tragedy which falls flat on it’s face like my eyelids did from wanting sleep.

Brave New World isn’t perfect but it leads to many parallels to our current time. People purchase drugs from dream merchants to keep themselves in a permanent state of happiness. We pop pills to combat sadness, to calm us down, to become more physically attractive and to overcome ailments. We stay glued to our televisions, our computer screens and our smart phones. Are we in the Brave New World that Huxley tried to warn against? I would wager a guess that if not then we are very close to it, very close indeed.