Movie Review: Brave New World (1998)

This is a review of a film that you will have trouble finding to watch. I've been lucky to get a dvd copy of it. It is, in my opinion, an interesting rarity sporting a decent cast as well as engaging theme with unusual, daring and characteristic of the 90s filming techniques and editing.

I remember listening to Iron Maiden album Brave New World back in 2000, which marked the return of Bruce Dickinson; the vocalist who seems to have always been there, but is not in fact a member of the original line-up, and joined one of the most influential metal bands in history about five years after it had played its first ever gig.
I think it was my birthday in early June when I first heard the album, days after its official release. It was a typically sunny day of Eastern European Summer, me in my leather jacket sitting outside on the ground in my garden, and blasting new Maiden while waiting for guests to arrive. What a combination for a birthday on the turn of a century. Back then I had only heard the title of Aldous Huxley’s novel, which got banned in a number of countries after it was published back in 1930s. I was unaware that a television film with the same title as that of Iron Maiden’s new album had been filmed a couple of years earlier. To this day I’m unaware of how the novel is linked to that music album, but quite aware of what the novel, and the film each is about.

For those who are unaware of Brave New World; the story features babies grown in a lab because that is normal in dystopian society that puts production and efficiency above all else; people belong to other people, being happy without religion and art. If they are not happy, they get something like 10 day reconditioning course, where they are reminded about what world they live in, and what’s true for everyone there.

That’s just to give you a brief overview of the setting of Brave New World – I think any film, or series (there are series that have been released in 2020, but I haven’t seen those) would have its own version of what Brave New World is like, depending on what in the original novel vibes with series, or film creators more than anything else. I think this has definitely been the case with 1998 version, which echoes 1990s on nearly every level. Here we get the reality, which people are unable to escape, even if willing to do so, as one that looks like a perpetual TV advert with house and trip hop music in the background. In my opinion, this had been done very cleverly, and masterfully at that, because precisely the music, combined with overall aesthetics of tv adverts and mainstream music videos de-emotion the experience of watching the movie – there are little to no expectations in regards to plot twists or structure of a story. Add to that clothes and outfits of fine design and colors, especially in case of Mustapha Mond, played by Leonard Nimoy, late owner of iconic Star Trek face; and what you thus get is basically a dystopian catwalk used by people that are there ready to film an advertisement at any given moment – it’s a society where the culture of advertisement and fashion functions as a cornerstone. As Tim Guinee’s “savage” John Cooper in the film notes, “everything is false”; there is a distortion, or absence of normal, natural human reaction to different phenomena in the story – phenomena like birth and death, for instance, that would seem like something requiring a certain reaction from human being.

The chosen techniques for capturing the “false” only become more understandable later on in the film when some people, such as Lenina Crowne, played by Rya Kihlstedt, begin to question whether that world they have been conditioned to experience really equals to real human experience. The scene with her and John Cooper, where Crowne wants to understand what love and passion is, does feel like an experience of watching an actual movie – there is nothing that switches the focus off it, or de-emotions the moment.

Rya Kihlstedt and Tim Guinee in Brave New World, 1998. Source

I think films like Brave New World, The Island or Equilibrium offer an opportunity for a puissant self-check of how false and fake things are in and around us.

Regarding Iron Maiden’s album though – with songs like “The Wicker Man” and “The Nomad” I imagine it being closer to one the rebels outside urban environment would be listening to; there are too many savage emotions in it. It’s too heavy for those who condition themselves to believe genetics determine who we are, or what rank in the society we get. Late Miguel Ferrer’s (of Robocop and Twin Peaks fame) Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning would likely call me an agent of antisocial misinformation, but I’m telling you; he ain’t know sh.t because I’d listen to Iron Maiden only when it’s a uniting factor – Ministry and Deathstars are the real rebel deal, always helpful in unconditioning.

Peer Ynt