George Orwell wrote several influential books back in the day. Possibly the best known of these is "1984". It's a book that most people have claimed to have read but when pressed on it they don't really know the story and generally miss the message. Part of this reason is that George Orwell was a satirist. Not necessarily the "ha ha" kind of satirist but one that instead took existing social norms and well known events and spoke about them in a satirical way. Such as what he did with "Animal Farm".
It is, at it's heart, a satire of the Russian Revolution, communism and the totalitarian system that it imposed. Many characters are representative of actual individuals involved in the revolution while others are more subjective concepts. For example Old Major is seen as a combination of Lenin and Karl Marx, Snowball is obviously a stand in for Trotsky and Napoleon is Stalin. Other characters like Squealer could be seen as Prada, the propaganda newspaper of the regime, Mollie the cow could be seen as the bourgeoisie and Boxer the horse as the Stakhanovite movement.
The story follows the revolution as the animals, tired of the conditions on the farm and how farmer Jones mistreats them, rise up against him and take over the farm for themselves. At the start everything is great. The animals all work together to achieve their goals, they all share equally in the harvest and everything is put to a vote. But like in all movements one person, or pig in this case, decide that they need to be in charge. Soon the pigs are running the farm, trading with the outside world for resources they can't get themselves and punishing those who stand up against them with swift and brutal violence.
The animation is decent as is the voice cast. It's nothing award winning but then this isn't exactly Disney here. It's definitely a product of it's time.
For a more overt message there was a puppet / stop motion film made in 1999 which is even more obviously mirroring the revolution. The voice cast is much better known and doesn't have the optimistic happy ending that this movie does.
I would recommend this to anybody who's read the novel or wants an overview of the Russian Revolution without wanting to actually learn the names and events that took place.
It is, at it's heart, a satire of the Russian Revolution, communism and the totalitarian system that it imposed. Many characters are representative of actual individuals involved in the revolution while others are more subjective concepts. For example Old Major is seen as a combination of Lenin and Karl Marx, Snowball is obviously a stand in for Trotsky and Napoleon is Stalin. Other characters like Squealer could be seen as Prada, the propaganda newspaper of the regime, Mollie the cow could be seen as the bourgeoisie and Boxer the horse as the Stakhanovite movement.
The story follows the revolution as the animals, tired of the conditions on the farm and how farmer Jones mistreats them, rise up against him and take over the farm for themselves. At the start everything is great. The animals all work together to achieve their goals, they all share equally in the harvest and everything is put to a vote. But like in all movements one person, or pig in this case, decide that they need to be in charge. Soon the pigs are running the farm, trading with the outside world for resources they can't get themselves and punishing those who stand up against them with swift and brutal violence.
The animation is decent as is the voice cast. It's nothing award winning but then this isn't exactly Disney here. It's definitely a product of it's time.
For a more overt message there was a puppet / stop motion film made in 1999 which is even more obviously mirroring the revolution. The voice cast is much better known and doesn't have the optimistic happy ending that this movie does.
I would recommend this to anybody who's read the novel or wants an overview of the Russian Revolution without wanting to actually learn the names and events that took place.