FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

The Wave uses a school classroom as the location to explore how fascism can take root. Your choices then for what we show on Tuesday 2 December are out of three very different films that explore a fictionalised fascism. Up for the (very democratic) vote are:

1984 (Michael Radford, UK, 1984)

"Michael Radford's brilliant film of Orwell's vision does a good job of finding that line between the "future" world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote." - Roger Ebert

John Hurt stars as Winston Smith, a weary bureaucrat in a grim, totalitarian future England where independent thought is forbidden, whose job it is to literally rewrite history. But when Winston meets the beautiful Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) he begins to rebel against Big Brother’s oppressive regime. With Hurt delivering an unforgettably haunting performance as Winston, alongside Richard Burton in his final screen role as the menacing O’Brien, 1984 is a powerful adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece.

The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet, USA, 2015)

“The fetid atmosphere is deliciously maintained in a film that boasts an invigorating clash between steady accretion and high bombast.” - Irish Times

Tom Sweet plays Prescott, the unhappy 10-year-old son of an American career diplomat (Liam Cunningham), who is in France in 1919 working on the Treaty of Versailles. What the young Prescott witnesses helps mould his political beliefs, while his dysfunctional family helps to nurture his ever-growing ego... Loosely inspired by the early years of 20th-century dictators, the feature debut from Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) is a chilling study of power, pride, and the making of tyranny - and boasts and a thunderous, award-winning score by Scott Walker.

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1940)

“It is a funny film, which we expect from Chaplin, and a brave one.” - Roger Ebert

Set in the fictional European country of Tomainia, Chaplin stars as both a humble Jewish barber suffering from WW1-induced memory loss, and the titular dictator Adenoid Hynkel, a blustering parody of Adolf Hitler. While Hynkel tries to expand his empire, the poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's fascist regime... Chaplin’s first full sound film also saw him writing, directing, producing, and composing the score, and stands as one of cinema’s most courageous statements against tyranny: both a comic triumph and a timeless plea for humanity.