Differences Between Animal Farm 1999 Movie and Book

Animal Farm Book vs. Movie

The 1999 film Animal Farm is much different from the 1945 Orwell novel of the same name. For one thing, the film opens up with one of the animals musing on the fall of Napoleon and all his evil ambitions—a scene that is nowhere to be found in the novel but a scene that is added most likely to reflect the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. For another thing, the film focuses on the cruelty of the humans to the animals in its opening, with the human children slinging rocks at the sheep and their father allowing it because it is fun for them. The novel opens on the other hand with Old Major’s dream of revolution, and the animals are obviously representative of the Soviet leaders, Trostky, Lenin, Stalin, and so on. Thirdly, the film is more dramatic than it is satirical, whereas the novel is much more satirical than it is dramatic; the film is somewhat sentimental whereas the novel is bleak, dark, and dreadfully funny—and heavy with symbolism.

The theme of the film is presented in its opening with one of the animals reflecting on the fall of Animal Farm. She states that era of oppression is over. Oppression is the main idea of the movie, therefore. And the big change in the film is that the oppression is only momentary. This change is an obvious reference to the fall of communism in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. Considering that the film was made a few years after this fall, it is not surprising that the filmmakers decided to take this route with the film. They wanted to give audiences hope, which Orwell did not have in 1945 when he wrote the book. The novel does not end with the fall of Animal Farm but rather with the leader pigs acting like humans and being indistinguishable from them. Although the farm is re-named Manor Farm in the book, it is still very much in control of the pigs who have sold out the vision of Snowball and have enriched themselves in the process, much at the expense of the rest of the animals. In fact, in the novel the animals are very much worse off than they were under Farmer Jones--but in the film the animals are freed from the oppression with the leader pigs killed.

Secondly, the film gives much more space to the humans in the story and how the animals are cruelly mistreated. It does not revel in the kind of satirical humor that Orwell used to great effect in the novel. For instance, Orwell writes in the opening of the novel: “The whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word — Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever” (2). As the novel goes on to prove, it is not Man that is the problem but rather egoism, which Napoleon and the other pigs have in abundance. They wish to have power and control, wealth and abundance for themselves. And for this reason, they resort to lies, deceit, brutality, and indoctrination to claim and maintain their control of the farm after Jones is run off. The animals, moreover, are symbols of real people: Snowball represents Lenin; Napoleon represents Stalin. Farmer Jones represents tsarist Russia. Squealer is the propagandist of the Soviet Party. In the film, these symbols are not made very apparent but instead the film focuses on the dreadful struggle for power among the pigs and the pain and suffering of the other animals as well as of Jones. Jones is portrayed sympathetically in the film, especially in the scene when he is browbeaten by another man in the local pub. Later in the film, Napoleon is shown in a propaganda movie with goose-stepping ducks walking like Nazi soldiers and Napoleon calling for arms and war—but the other animals have fled. This is all done without much humor.

But the novel is very humorous. It makes fun of the way totalitarian leaders will redefine the terms or rules that brought them to power in the first place. For instance, originally the rules of Animal Farm are that all animals are equal, but then it becomes “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”—which is meant to justify the pigs special position in the community. Then another rule—“two legs bad, four legs good”—becomes “four legs bad, two legs better” to justify the pigs walking on their hind legs like humans. In the end of the novel, the pigs are living in the house, drinking whiskey and arguing over cards with other humans and the rest of the animals are looking in through the window, left out of the party. The novel makes fun of communism in this way, and it makes fun of the Soviet leaders. But it ends on that note, not meaning to be sentimental at all. The point of the novel is simply to show how ridiculous communism is, since its leaders are inevitably motivated by a bad, egoistical spirit. The film, however, concludes with the animals having run off, waiting in a hideout for years until Napoleon’s experiment in brutality should finally collapse on its own. When that happens the animals emerge from their hideout to declare Napoleon’s era of oppression over. In the novel, Orwell does not allude to any such event. Instead, he suggests that the totalitarian spirit is alive and well anywhere leaders exist who are motivated by self-interest, greed and power for power’s sake.