In my review of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” I said that if her horny, problematic film were a book report, there would have been an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference afterward. But I still think she could have passed the class. I’m not sure about Andy Serkis. His adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” plays like he skipped the book and watched a bad movie with all-new characters and a Hollywood-friendly, mega-happy ending. Except that couldn’t possibly be the case, because the director who made that bad adaptation was also Serkis.
Orwell’s 1945 novella, for anyone who didn’t do the reading, is about farm animals who rebel against their oppressive human owner and decide to run the farm themselves. Their utopia gradually falls to ruin after the pigs get a taste of power, and by the end of the book — spoiler alert for something you should have read in high school — the pigs have manipulated all the other animals into supporting their own ruination. Everything is worse than before, and the once-revolutionary pigs are now indistinguishable from the original human tyrants.
It’s heavy stuff: grim, foreboding and a pointed allegory for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath. Orwell’s contrast between whimsical, Beatrix Potter-style anthropomorphic animals and vicious political commentary makes the book ideal for young people transitioning to more complicated reading comprehension. It’s a classic for many reasons and as familiar as any major literary text.
Serkis’ animated adaptation takes that text and, to be fair, adapts most of it. There is still a revolution on the farm, led by the pig Snowball (Laverne Cox), who is later Trotsky-ed out to pasture by the corrupt pig Napoleon (Seth Rogen). The workhorse Boxer (Woody Harrelson) is still exploited and martyred for his unwavering loyalty to the leaders of Animal Farm. Even Orwell’s mind-bending final image comes to life, and it’s as surreal and creepy as it probably should be.
But this version of “Animal Farm” doesn’t merely adapt the book. It also adds an audience surrogate, a young pig named Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo), who learns valuable lessons out loud, just in case the young audience doesn’t understand who the bad guys are and what exactly they did wrong. This is a little condescending but it’s not the film’s undoing. Nor is the decision to move all the events to the present, so that we can watch the pigs fall prey to the luxuries of modern capitalism, with all of its unnecessary purchases which distract from real life.
You could also forgive Serkis and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller for updating Orwell’s text to reflect modern political realities. Napoleon was always a master manipulator, but now he is explicitly inspired by Donald Trump, winning over a mindless herd by appealing to their worst and laziest instincts, and by altering their perception of reality with baseless claims that “everyone is saying” whatever he finds politically expedient. He has a mewling sycophant quasi-son, Squealer (Kieran Culkin), whom he routinely dismisses in favor of every new alliance. One of those alliances is a tech billionaire, Pilkington (Glenn Close), who is basically Elon Musk if Elon Musk had any actual charisma.
But those interesting, if not necessarily brilliant adaptational ideas then spiral out of control in the film’s final act, which is brand spanking new. Orwell’s “Animal Farm” ends with the former revolutionary workers once again living in a dystopia. Serkis’ version just keeps going until there’s yet another rebellion, perhaps arguing — as his closing credits suggest, since they depict many real historical tales with pigs instead of humans — that the events of Orwell’s story are cyclical. Oppressors will always be overthrown, new oppressors will rise, and those oppressors will also be overthrown. At least eventually.
On the surface this looks like a halfway-respectable reinterpretation of the original story, but Serkis’ storytelling isn’t as strong as Orwell’s and he can’t make the happy ending convincing. If anything it may be even bleaker. Orwell’s doom-and-gloom conclusion was cynical and powerful. Serkis’ hopeful ending rings false because, since it’s Serkis who claims society is in a perpetual cycle, he’s also arguing this new victory is short-lived. Indeed, in his attempt to inspire young people to rise up against their oppressors — for what is Lucky if not a stand-in for the future rebels in the audience — he’s also leaving room for them to fail the rest of us in the future. You can’t claim history is a never-ending circle and then say, as an afterthought, right at the end, that this time will be different, and for no particular reason.
“Animal Farm” isn’t especially well-animated, and the acting is mostly just competent. Some of the all-star casting is effective. Harrelson brings a pathetic naïveté to Boxer that adds to his tragedy. Rogen’s iconic laugh was, it turns out, just one contextual cue away from chilling the bones. And casting Cox as Snowball, a revolutionary who is also the first targeted by the tyrannical new regime, has weight to it (although given how random some the rest of the casting is, that interpretation may be unintentional). “Animal Farm” is also not particularly funny, especially when it tries, since the cutesy new jokes are always juxtaposed with Orwell’s original horrors.
It’s not that Serkis was wrong to change Orwell’s text. Many of the best adaptations in history add a new perspective to the material, or even challenge it outright. The problem isn’t that the new “Animal Farm” is unfaithful, it’s that the changes aren’t an improvement. Most of them only call attention to the power of Orwell’s novella, and the comparative powerlessness of this new version. It’s a quote-unquote “bad” movie but that’s not because it didn’t try to be a good one. It looks like Serkis tried really hard. But, as in “Animal Farm” itself, trying to do the right thing isn’t enough. You also have to follow through.
