1995 Directed by Bruce Pittman
"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." This is the premise of the Showtime film adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. The film centers around a young man (Harrison) who is smarter than his peers, and is not affected by the usual "Handicapping" which is used to train all Americans so everyone is of equal intelligence.
Harrison Bergeron - IQ Runner, I.Q.-Runner - Aufstand der Untermenschen, Гаррисон Бержерон, Гаррісон Бержерон, 哈里森·伯吉朗
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112th Review for The Collab Weekly Movie Watch
Very good and interesting (if a little too trite for the sci-fi genre) premise about authoritarianism and free will, starring a young and charming Sean Astin as a kid who’s having a hard time in school and goes through some (non-painful) Ludovico technique procedure to get smart. However, he would eventually realize there’s something more sinister (no s**t Sherlock!) going on, run by a likeable villain in Christopher Plummer. You also got a special appearance by Howie Mandel.
While the blend of silliness and nihilism is poorly balanced, making the film feel very jarring, this was nonetheless a decently enjoyable film, mostly because you never know where it is headed, at times…
Viewed with the Collab.
Various theme work comes out of Vonnegut’s satire “Harrison Bergeron” (equality vs individualism, dissent vs authority, media and technology, the striations of freedom, etc). With partially ham-fisted tone and a memorable role played to the hilt by a charming and youthful Sean Astin, it’s easy to forget the film is based on a short story.
One of the immediate red flags when approaching something visual, is that it elongates the source material. The writer’s rule of thumb: a page of screenwriting roughly equals a minute of screen time. This is noting that with any adaption there is the risk of creative license done by those adapting the work, and Harrison Bergeron is no exception, as the ending…
1st Bruce Pittman
Effectively a teenage wank fantasy of the crushingly pretentious variety. No one is as smart as me! None of you ordinary people appreciate me! One day the super smart girls will want to fuck me and I'll get to control what everyone sees on television! It's a far cry from Vonnegut's original caustic tale of a 7ft tall 14 year old genius declaring himself Emperor on television; Astin has a schlubby everyman quality, even with his hair all poofy, that makes the idea of him as some sort of übermensch as faintly laughable. Plummer manages to sell the boring fanaticism of a man obsessed with administration far better than Astin sells youthful idealism, which if you're making…
I'm not sure if Harrison Bergeron showcases the most absurd vision of a dystopic future, but it certainly is an outlandish one. Based on a Kurt Vonnegut short story, an oppressive government run by the elite 1% has restructured American society following a second Civil War to limit the intelligence of the general populace via mental suppressant headbands. The running theory being if everyone is equally stupid, no one will be discontent. Getting an A+ in school is frowned upon, while achieving a C- is ideal. Without knowing his political beliefs, I wasn't sure if this was the most thinly veiled anti-Communist propaganda piece, or an even thinner satirization of the fear of a socialist take-over. Poe's Law in action.…
COLLAB FILM CLUB
A Showtime TV adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s futuristic short story about a teenager who uncovers a group of elites who control the government and its citizens. It does this to eliminate dissent and conflict by making everyone “ordinary”. It’s loaded with philosophical ideas, irony, satire and humor, very much in keeping with Vonnegut’s style. Well-done and amusing, its bite is unfortunately softened by its “feel-good” and glossy quality kept it from being too dark. Which was a bit disappointing.
I should acknowledge that I’m not a fan of sci-fi, either in novels or films. Nor have I read Vonnegut, who was wildly popular – with a big fan base – in the late 1960s and…
Assessments towards the most valuable, insightful, and mandatory-to-read authors of contemporary literature wind up mentioning Kurt Vonnegut at least once, assuming they have any credibility of course, as the satirically bleak and ruthlessly postmodern literary style of his wry sometimes-sci-fi, sometimes-fantasy, sometimes-neither fables wound up summarizing the 20th century's horrors and ironies into timeless novels that could be murderously funny and brutally depressing, all while maintaining humanist philosophies as a shockingly soulful core that makes the tragedies his characters endure all the more devastating and all the more mundane. This paradoxically dour yuckster had the capability of enriching the lives and worldviews of many intrepid readers....which makes all the more odd why I, a fellow dour yuckster, have never read…
Watched with the Collab
My favourite parts:
> My bae Buster Keaton on television. Not once. But twice.
> Christopher Plummer threatening to put a gun to Beethoven's head then smashing a vinyl. Blam-o.
Okay, seriously, did anyone working on this read any Vonnegut? So self-serious, why so serious. Sean Astin's performance? Atrocious. How was he hired to do anything after? How?
In the short story, Vonnegut focused on Harrison's parents with Harrison making an appearance only towards the end, wrecking havoc on a ballet performance literally weighed down by intentioned weights, masks, and mediocrity. When Vonnegut goes absurd, he commits to the bit is what I'm saying. Woeful, largely unenjoyable, just go read the short story instead. It's 7 pages and…
I've so far loved four of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. I found Breakfast of Champions when I was about 19, and while fairly well read at the point I had never before encountered literary fiction with drawings of anuses in it, so that was a real eye opener. Later I also devoured Slaughterhouse Five, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. So I'm decently au-fait with the Vonnegut style. Harrison Bergeron is from a short story he wrote in 1961, and as I've recently been musing, sometimes these short form and high concept tales work far better on the page than the screen. Certainly the crisp and straightforward prose Vonnegut delivered his headfuck ideas in is missing, replaced with a very…
I am giving myself major props for recognizing Hayden FUCKING Christensen as the little boy who shows up at the very end of the movie. I was like: "Wait, I KNOW that face!" Admittedly, I first thought it might be one of the Amell brothers, but then in my mind I saw Christensen's face as Stephen Glass (yeah, THAT'S the character I saw? wtf man.) But I figured it out and only THEN confirmed on IMDB. I am a god.
Anyway, sorry sorry sorry, the movie, not me, let's talk about that.
This is one of two TV movies based on a Vonnegut novel that came out around this period in time, the other one being BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS starring…
“It’s not your fault your stupid any more than it’s my fault that I'm smart. We can’t all be average.”
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story looked ahead to 2081. This TV movie adaptation decided to halve that, & only look ahead 58 years, from 1995 to 2053. Anything that decision might have had to do with budget, is then blown on making it seem as if the 1950s have come back in vogue. Oh & then the rest of the movie bears almost no similarity to the short. I see this time & again, making me wonder why these things happen. It’s not like any advertising in 1995 using Vonnegut’s name was going to attract mass audiences. So seriously – why do studios…
I should really give it extra credit for that ending which was kinda jarring in the moment, but also very true to its dystopian setting. This low budget Canadian adaptation of a short story by Vonnegurt very much kept me interested in where this was all gonna go throughout. Like it had me absorbed which should be enough right there to tell you that this is--whatever minor gripes aside i might have--pretty damn solid. What's it about? Well this movie takes place (I think they said sometime in the 2030's?) where the U.S. had begun in the name of equality, experimented with trying to make everybody in the population have the same intelligence level. This of course means making the…
