BRAVE NEW WORLD (the film)
The book/film is set in an imaginary world, where free love, independent thinking and emotions are unwanted. People are conditioned to be happy and whenever they feel any real emotions, they take some antidepressant, called Soma. Society is split up into four classes of people, chosen by their mental capabilities, ranging from alpha to delta. Alpha are supposed to be the most intelligent and are trained to lead and support others, but they all don't really realize that everything is lead by the Controller. He was the one who founded this new world and created it's ideologies and rules and his main goal is to ensure false happiness for everyone. Of course he thinks that he does the right thing, but as the story evolves, we will see that he is wrong. The other classes are betas, gammas and deltas where deltas are on the lowest level and have to do the physical work.
From birth on, all people are constantly conditioned in enormous conditioning centers to be happy and to love their work. The most important slogan that turn up is "Everyone is equally important".
Sounds like a good idea to make everyone feel important, but it has it's downsides. In this brave new world, love is unwanted and not needed anymore so it is just reduced to physical contact.
But there are places called "Reservations" where live is practically as it is now. Definitely not perfect, but far more desireable than the brave new world. The people in the bnw are totally seperated from the "real world" and when one day John, who is living in a Reservation, comes to the city, it draws a lot of media attention on him. He simply can not understand how those people can stand to live in this new world, without love and feelings. He finds some friends who he influences a lot, and one of them is Lenina (I hope I got the name right). There is a small group of people that are advising and helping the controller and one of them is Lenina's friend.
As the story goes on, John practically becomes the reality show of the bnw and when the media attention and the whole situation becomes unbearable for him, he commits suicide. He had really tried to change this new world, to lead them back on the right way, but he couldn't succeed. What probably nobody will never find out, is the fact that one of the people out of the group that is surrounding the controller, was John's father and in the bnw, the words "father" and "mother" are bad language, because all children are rather produced then born.
Heavily impressed by John's death, Lenina and her friend start thinking about their current live and when she finds out that she is pregnant, she decides not to abort the baby (what is totally common in this world) but to keep it and to leave the city and to live in the country with her friend.
Themes:
There is a wide range of themes in this book/film, lead, once again, by love. For me love was the most important theme because it's missing made all the people unhappy. Other themes are for instance independent thinking, discrimination, a person's identity and place in the society as well as emotions and feelings. Another major theme is the theme of power, personalized by the controller.
Personal comment:
I like the story and the themes of the film a lot, but I think I would have enjoyed more to read the book than to watch the film. Anyways, the film was overally pretty good and I enjoyed watching it.
As I already mentioned, I particularely liked the story, but I fear that our world is slowly shifting in that direction too. Some items of the plot are near reality already, like the human cloning that is done by Severino Antinory, the italian doctor that is claming that he already has done experiments on cloning humans. Out of the story I conclude that it should be one of our main goals to ensure a life with free will and emotions for everyone. John stated this opinion like this:
"I don't want comfort, I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom"