Orwell: 2+2=5 Review: A Succinct Warning for What’s Already Here

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“From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned,” George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay “The Prevention of Literature.” Orwell: 2+2=5, the new documentary from Raoul Peck, serves as a stark reminder of indisputable facts and the rate at which they are disappearing. This film comes at a precarious time in which fiction is often presented as fact. Phrases from Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984 hit as hard (if not harder) than they did so many decades ago. In a totalitarian state, “war is peace” and there are “thoughtcrimes.” Capitulation is not just expected; it is required.

Peck casts Damian Lewis as the voice of Orwell, and it works incredibly well. The film as a whole is narrated via Orwell’s words, often laid over video clips from current human-rights atrocities happening all over the world, overseen by politicians who justify their actions with euphemisms and simplifications. The images are hard to digest, and Peck knows this. Orwell (his pen name was George Orwell, his given name Eric Arthur Blair) warned against despotism and autocratic leadership after serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma during the 1920s, acting as “part of the machinery of despotism.” As he wrote (and Lewis reads early in the film): “In order to hate imperialism, you’ve got to be part of it.”

Clips from different television and film adaptations of 1984 are well-placed, most especially the Michael Radford picture that was, in fact, released in the year 1984. Editor Alexandra Strauss deserves a lot of credit: her construction of text and voiceover matching current actions and political speaking points work as a crescendo. Viewers will watch and boil over with anger, then fade into sadness. At a certain point, Orwell: 2+2=5 is a bit too much to bear. As Orwell’s essay “All Art is Propaganda,” recited in the film, tells us: “When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships.” But then that is the point. We are, all of us, on the sinking ship. As Orwell warned, we find ourselves living in a world controlled by a few of the richest people that ever lived developing new tech to bolster population control in the name of security. Genocide occurring in the name of war, in the name of protection.

There are memorable cutaways to Maria Ressa’s powerful lecture at the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, as well as extended clips of Ken Loach films (Land and Freedom is a stand-out). Perhaps the saddest, most effective thing about Orwell: 2+2=5 is that it all seems so obvious. The evidence, the crimes, the lies––all of it. So many of these despots lack any nuance or fortitude. Raoul Peck remains a steadfast beacon of truth. In this time when fiction is fact, we need as many of him as we can get.

Orwell: 2+2=5 is now in theaters.

The post Orwell: 2+2=5 Review: A Succinct Warning for What’s Already Here first appeared on The Film Stage.

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