I just caught the ending of Animal Farm on Hallmark. I can't comment on how they
bastardised the rest of the book, but the ending has me in rant mode.
Near the end the dog sees the pigs eating at the table with the
farmers, as per the book.
Then the dog, a horse and a duck see 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others' on the door and decide to leave, not in the book. Then, you have a film
where these ducks are changing 'Four legs good, two legs better'. This is where
Orwell leaves his masterpiece. Now, Hallmark couldn't have a brilliant powerful
ending, oh no.
There's a fade out, and it fades in to the dog, horse and duck living in an
abandoned tractor. The dog goes on about how they waited and waited, knowing that
Animal Farm would collapse. There's a storm and they go back to the farm to see
what's there. It's devastated with pig corpses lying around but there are survivors.
There are new owners now, and we will not make the same mistakes again'. This said
with a picture of a lovely 50s family in a car driving in to take over the farm. The
music and the tone make no mistake that this is a happy ending.
Now, you can see this as a family network giving a happy ending to a book, which is bad.
But Animal Farm is a satire (if you didn't know that read it again).
But it would seem that collapse of the farm represents the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I wonder what George Orwell would've thought.
Note: Hallmark is a cable tv channel. It does lots of made for tv shows, and markets itself as a family channel.
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