WAKE N BAKE

In which Erin informs you of the best movies to blaze to

Animals are freaking adorable, as are the displays of most anyone attempting to repurpose that which a political and literary master has already said so perfectly, so I figured the TV movie adaptation of Animal Farm (1999) would be an appropriate choice for stonerific viewing.  (In addition to the real animal actors, there are even a few Jim Henson puppets gracing the dramatis personae, as it were.)  Most characters are played/voiced by recognizable British (human) actors like Pete Postlethwaite, Ian Holm, Julia Ormond, Alan Stanford, and Patrick Stewart.  I guess they figured the gravity of Stewart’s commanding tone would disguise the fact that the filmmakers had refashioned a galvanizing Orwell classic into Babe.  Just look at this poster, for god’s sake.

Are these the faces of insurrection? Yes. Yes they are. Oh yes they are! Who’s got an insurrection face?! Yeah, you do! Who’s a fuzzy?!

This film takes on some of the most bleak and serious observations of human society and turns it into a giggle-fest–and no, I wasn’t laughing at the places, or in the way, the filmmakers intended.  (It continually left me thinking, “Goddammit, where are Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot when you need them?”)

Jessie (Ormond), a sheepdog, acts as the film’s narrator.  She describes, with slow and majestic Mid-Atlantic elocution, the farm’s progression from tyrannical mismanagement, to revolution and a life without oppressive humans–and back again.  The viewer is treated mostly to inoffensive cuteness and humans being British-evil–you know what I mean. (Really, the only one missing from the roster is Timothy Spall.)

See, he’s good with animals.

Farmer Jones (Postlewaithe) is a drunken boor who runs the downward-spiraling Manor Farm.  Pilkington (Stanford) is a more competent farmer and landowner, who enjoys being a condescending creditor to the desperate Jones.  All this human drama, however, is child’s play compared to what the animals of Manor Farm must endure:  mistreatment and neglect at the hands of Jones, who often gets drunk and forgets to feed the animals; being given grueling work on the fields with no reward; theft of their embryos, or of the milk meant for their children; even outright butchering of their friends and relatives–all so that Jones and his wife can have a car and sleep in a house, while the animals freeze on piles of straw, never experiencing a single benefit of all their hard work.  The animals have a secret meeting, which crystallizes a revolution.  It’s a little like Occupy Wall Street, except it’s violent and it works, and the humans are driven off the farm for good.  Of course, instead of an awe-inspiring act of righteous anger and subversion, the “revolution” amounts to little more than animal hijinks and a lot of bird shit.  From there, Snowball the pig (Kelsey Grammer?!) assumes a position of leadership and works earnestly to better his compatriots’ lives–he learns and teaches reading, organizes labor, and even tries his hoof at relieving an unmilked cow’s discomfort.  (The movie’s most glaring fault is also what makes it so nice to bake to–it’s too adorbz to be taken seriously.)

Of course, things don’t stay rosy forever, as one of the other pigs, Napoleon (Stewart), raises a secret puppy army (!) to chase the idealistic Snowball off the farm.  Napoleon declares Snowball a traitor and slyly begins constructing a dictatorship–amending the tenets of Animal Farm in such a way as to exempt pigs from the rules of society, making them the only beneficiaries of everyone’s collective efforts–sound familiar?  He also spends time developing a taste for whiskey.  Yep.  Drunk pigs.  We’ve got ‘em.

Meet the new boss…

…same as the old boss.

Many of the laughs in this film result from its’ flailing for balance as it tries to be both endearing and serious.  It achieves neither, and instead finds itself shuttling between Cutesy Town and Didactic-ville.  (“It’s immoral!”  “It’s business.”  Yes.  We get it.)  Curiously, it barely even attempts satire–the most obvious object of such a game–which makes me wonder what inspired these people to even make Animal Farm in the first place.  The only exception to this is the introduction of television to the barn, where the pigs show some pretty hilarious (and adorable!) newsreels of Napoleon, “our glorious leader.”  It’s too bad that the rest of the film doesn’t display the same awareness of tone.

There are a few scenes that do have potential for real pathos, such as the animals’ discovery of their slaughtered brethren in Farmer Jones’ house of comparative luxury.  But this sort of realism of animal life raises a particular issue with Animal Farm adaptations.  It makes it seem as though the filmmakers read the book (a generous assumption, I know) and only saw a little story about animals instead of an allegory for economic class struggle–which is a stupid and wasteful shame, seeing as the work’s relevance has been burning steadily ever since first printing.  Because certain literary devices lose their potency when made into real images, what we’re left with is a movie with confused priorities; are we telling a story about humans, or about other animals?  If it really is meant to be seen as a microcosm of human society, like the one Orwell created, then the realistic depiction of animal-specific grievances really waters down the film’s political bite–the entire raison d’être of the damn thing.  If, on the other hand, the filmmakers did intend to stretch Orwell’s vision of justice to include animals…  well, the fact that making the film involved the work of real animals with no ability to consent would flavor the project with a rather bitter irony.  Especially since they could have just animated it (like they did in 1955.)

All of the film’s failed efforts are smashed to bits anyway, with an eye-roll-inducing deus ex machina, after which the sun shines and Jessie pipes in through voice over to say, simply, “We won’t let it happen again.  We’ll rebuild it.  We’ll be free.”  Then the film ends before she says, “You know, until we do let it happen again, and history repeats itself, and every new order requires overthrow to splinter off into a new order, and so on, until the very fabric of society is just an ever-receding revolution spiral within countries, counties, towns, and households, until finally we’re just a bunch of Tyler Durdens and Dwight Schrutes, rebelling against our own tyranny by punching ourselves in the face.”  (I was smoking some really good shit, okay?)

I wanted to include the clip, but the only videos available were the kind where the uploader films his TV screen, so fuck that noise.

But here’s the deal.  Wake n Bake is not a column about great films.  It’s a column about films that are great to watch while stoned.  This movie is terrible.  It trivializes Orwell’s observations and the progressive cause by rescuing itself at the last minute from the ramifications of the previous events–we’re not so lucky in real life.  What’s worse is knowing that it’s all actually happening, right now, to us–and not only is it just happening to us, we’re actually being forced to aid and abet this whole horrible thing (on pain of starving in a Dumpster.)  The shit that Orwell was spitting was very real–a little too real.  This movie takes that real shit, cutes it up with snuggly animals, and says with a straight face that there’s hope for us all.  A terrible crime, to be sure, but I guess it’s just a guilty pleasure–like Mollie with her ribbons–to smoke a bowl and pretend that everything’s going to be okay.