10 Dystopian Sci-Fi Films Where The State Wins

An accurate but almost unendurably bleak adaptation of George Orwell's novel of the same name, Nineteen Eighty-Four takes a peek into the life of Winston Smith (John Hurt), an average man caught in an alternative history, living under the rule of totalitarian super-state Oceania.

Winston's days are spent in service to omnipresent governing body the Party, who place telescreens with two-way viewing in every room, keep its subjects on diets of slop and rations, and encourage a social atmosphere of suspicion, treachery and paranoia. Any slight deviation from the norm is enough for the Thought Police to descend and the independent thinker to vanish, but Winston has his small ways of rebelling: retaining historical facts from his job in wide-scale revisionism at the Ministry of Truth, keeping a secret and forbidden diary, and falling in love with Julia (Suzanna Hamilton). And he almost gets away with it too!

Just as Winston has begun to relax into his private nonconformity, Big Brother's representatives descend and secrete him away to the Ministry of Love, where he is worked over by the people in charge. While plenty of movies since have managed to rally a note of optimism, Nineteen Eighty-Four is as dark as they come, reflecting the reality of the totalitarian state. Winston succumbs to the Party's torture and loses his ability to think and perceive independently, broken so completely as to be nothing more than a hollow receptacle for state propaganda.