If Orwell's 1948 novel was a dreary vision of the future, then director Michael Radford's contemporary take is dutifully reverent. A very gaunt John Hurt plays Winston Smith, a worker at the Ministry of Truth who dares believe that "two plus two equals four." Disillusioned with the harrowing oppression of Big Brother, he seeks out illicit diversions, grasping at truths that haven't been incinerated in the "memory hole." This leads him to a desperate tryst with a fellow traveler, the pallid sensualist Julia (Suzanna Hamilton). His downfall, amid the ubiquitous whining of Doublethink, comes at the hands of the merciless inquisitor O'Brien, played with brute restraint by Richard Burton in his final screen role. Like the visionary landscapes of Blade Runner and Brazil, 1984 creates a totally airless, tyrannical world of its own. The all-pervading telescreens displaying Big Brother, the loudspeakers blaring out totalitarian maxims, the cramped, stark quarters where no pleasure is legal: this oppressive environment perfectly summarizes the sparse existence of its inhabitants. Severe, pulsing urban montages meld with more serenely paced dream sequences of the Golden Country, an idyllic region outside the reach of the Party. But it is absolute power, captured in the hard-edged tones of grey and brown, that triumphs over Winston Smith, No. 6079.