There’s No Keeping ‘Em Down on the ‘Farm’

It takes longer to watch Sunday’s mostly admirable two-hour “Animal Farm” than to read George Orwell’s deceptively slender novel on which it is based.

And what a novel. Traveling across decades with timeless relevance is Orwell’s anti-totalitarianism theme that remains as valid today as when “Animal Farm” was first published in 1945 as a not-too-veiled satire of Stalinism and the miseries it imposed.

Joseph Stalin is long gone, as are the Kremlin of old, the Berlin Wall and other vestiges of the Cold War. Yet authoritarian peril still looms globally along with insidious mind shaping through manipulation of words, which Orwell warned about in “Animal Farm” and later in “1984.”

This is not Dr. Dolittle speaking animalese.

In most of its basics, the “Animal Farm” that TNT presents--by merging computer graphics, humans and animals and Jim Henson animatronic doubles with human voices--is the one Orwell began writing before the end of World War II. It offers thought control and disinformation, purges and show trials, with “crimes against animalism” code for crimes against the state. And unlike recent feature films “Babe” and its darker sequel, “Babe: Pig in the City,” TNT joins Orwell in deploying anti-animal brutality and exploitation primarily as a means to another message, even though an aging horse being sent to the glue factory becomes as tragic as any scene in literature.

The story:

Abused animals that speak like humans capture Manor Farm from its drunken, incompetent and cruel owner, rename it Animal Farm and establish it as a model community where four-legged creatures and birds all exist equally.

Two boars, Snowball (the voice of Kelsey Grammer) and Napoleon (Patrick Stewart), vie for leadership of this revolution. A counterattack by the deposed Farmer Jones (Pete Postlethwaite) and neighboring humans is beaten back. Napoleon runs off the idealistic Snowball and declares him a traitor, then allies with the human enemy to consolidate his personal dictatorship over the farm, whose downtrodden inhabitants learn that “some animals are more equal than others.” Among the unequal is Boxer (Paul Scofield), a noble, but gullible and obedient cart horse who is trucked off to slaughter when no longer able to work.

Ultimately, Napoleon, his propagandist Squealer (Ian Holm) and the other ruling pigs revert to Manor Farm and become indistinguishable from their human neighbors. In other words, Orwell’s big finish, his shrill warning whistle--which he blew at once wittily and chillingly by having Napoleon and his pig pals ultimately walk on their hind legs--was that if unchecked, wickedness triumphs.

With that in mind, Orwell in his book has Benjamin the donkey offer this grim barnyard epitaph: “Life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.”

Which proves how naive even a donkey that talks can be. What Benjamin had not foreseen was the upbeat rewrite.

The first came in a 1955 British film animation of “Animal Farm” that U-turned the ending by having the victimized animals retake the farm from the despotic pigs and live happily ever after.

Another comes in Sunday’s TNT version, whose teleplay by Alan Janes and Martyn Burke applies its own rosy beam to Orwell’s bleak outlook. “Hopeful” is what this new ending is called by “Animal Farm” director John Stephenson, who manages Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in London.

Perhaps Orwell would have approved. Perhaps not, given the sour, pessimistic mind-set of his subsequent utopian novel, “1984,” which he never claimed was the future, only that it could be. In any case, it’s presumptuous for filmmakers to read his mind posthumously by capping his “Animal Farm” with their own totalitarianism of words, however well-intentioned.

The script’s less-significant changes largely work fine. That includes having the collie, Jessie (Julia Ormond), serve as narrator; having Napoleon use television to pacify his farm subjects; and having humans electronically bug the farm to spy on the animals.

Inexplicably, though, Janes and Burke have added a sex scene early in the story, which may seem trivial given that “Animal Farm” is no kids tale to begin with, and that some of its scenes are too gruesome for most young eyes.

Yet what if you should want to watch it with your 10-year-old, say, as a point of discussion about tyranny versus democracy. Suddenly, the sex scene! It’s fleeting. It’s no big deal. But there they are--Jones and the wife of another farmer--going at it under the covers. And for goodness sakes why? The snippet of action supplies absolutely nothing but a possible deterrent to parents wanting to watch with their kids.

Orwell’s vision is not entirely 20/20 in “Animal Farm.” Just as Napoleon is meant to be Stalin, the virtuous Snowball is surely a stand-in for Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s great rival in the early days of the Soviet Union. Yet Trotsky was no Snowball. He, too, was a ruthless communist, and his regime might have been no less brutal had he prevailed instead of Stalin.

Otherwise, Orwell is a highly lucid observer whose farm metaphor is acutely on the mark. Although TNT’s production marches to the same music as his profound wisp of a novel, its rhythms are different, and the pen proves mightier here than the camera.

That includes the author’s conclusion, for some stories are not meant to have happy endings.

* “Animal Farm” can be seen Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight on TNT. It also will be shown Wednesday at 8 p.m. and several other times during the month. The network has rated it TV-PG-SV (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for sex and violence).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.